


Ave mundi luminar, ave mundi rosa

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 30 Day OTP Challenge, 30-Day Fic Meme, Angst, Blanket M Rating, Canon Compliant, Canon Gay Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Multi, SAT words, Spoilers, tokars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-10 13:24:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 31
Words: 31,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2026710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Bury me here,” he said quietly, staring at the canopy of trees. “If something should ever happen. I would like to know I was put to rest in death where I was happiest in life.”</i>
</p><p> <i>“Happiest?”</i></p><p> <i>“Here,” Renly repeated. “With you. At summer’s end.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Holding hands

**Author's Note:**

> Here they are—the ficlets for the 30-Day OTP Challenge. (The bit on the tin was from Day 4.) They’re in chapters by day/prompt, and the last chapter is a a somewhat-coherent story; I put the pieces of this in chronological order, because why not? Basically bookverse-canon-compliant (with a few minor things taken from the show), no modern AUs, and they keep to a continuous timeline. Some are fluff, some are self-gratifying porn, and all are under 1000 words.
> 
> Title is Latin for, “Hail, light of the world. Hail, rose of the world,” and it’s from the next-to-last movement of Orff’s Carmina Burana, “Blanziflor et Helena,” a song about women. Go figure.

**Day 1: Holding hands (G)**

“I think your lady of Stark is staring at us,” Margaery—now Lady Margaery of House Baratheon—murmured into her husband’s ear, leaning closer to him so as not to be overheard. The wedding festivities were as raucous as could be expected from the camp—Renly’s followers were never a specially sober lot, and Margaery would fear for life and limb when the time for bedding came. 

King Renly, as he styled himself, shot a glance down the long table. “So it would seem,” he whispered back, giving his newly-wed wife a chaste kiss on the cheek even as Margaery saw his hand tighten over her brother’s, safely out of sight under the table. “I suspect she suspects.”

“I would, were I in her place. You’re not particularly careful,” Margaery replied under her breath, all exasperation on the top of it, but a passing fondness beneath. “We’re _wed_ now.”

Renly’s free hand moved to her hair, twirling a curl around his finger. “And we’ll be bedded, and all will be done aright in the world. You shall be queen,” here he turned to Loras, “and I shall have a tragic accident that leaves you regent whilst I live out my days in the Free Cities with this one.” Renly laughed at his own wit. 

Margaery returned, with a smile of challenge, “This is, of course, assuming you’re…capable.”

Ser Loras, who had hitherto been ignoring the conversation, caught the final bit and burst into uproarious laughter as all the color drained from his lover’s face. He gave the king’s hand a squeeze, invisible to the party, stroking over it with fingers callused from swordplay. Renly’s face, schooled into the visage of the perfect lord and husband, flickered a moment into _want_ as he gazed upon his new lady’s elder brother, and she herself laughed a low-pitched, clever laugh into his ear. 

“I’m sure you’re perfectly capable, my _love_ ,” she murmured, teeth grazing his ear, “if you can only figure out where to _put_ it.”

Fortunately, or unfortunately, for Renly, one of his wedding party caught a glance of the new-made queen’s gesture, sending up the cry of, “Bed! Bed them! To bed!” to which the rest of the party quickly caught on, lifting Renly away from his love, carrying him to duty’s own chamber, stripping him along the way.


	2. Cuddling somewhere

**Day 2: Cuddling somewhere (T)**

Loras laughed. “You’re naked,” he observed.

Renly returned his own easy laugh. “That I am. Come here.”

Trepidation entered Loras’s eyes, unaccustomed and unfamiliar. Renly had, suspiciously, not assigned Ser Loras—Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Rainbow Guard, whatever ridiculous name he was calling it—to stand sentry outside the bridal chamber, a slightly-larger tent than that of either of its single occupants. At an impatient gesture from the king, however, Loras approached, shedding his tunic as he went, fitting himself against his lover with all the familiarity of years past.

The king’s arm tightened around Loras, who pressed his face into Renly’s bare chest as if to erase the suspicion creeping through his mind. Surely, though, surely, if they’d actually consummated the marriage, Loras would have smelled it. He lifted his head a bit, asking with an air that tried for casual, “Did you fuck her?”

The damning question went unanswered except for the stroking of Renly’s hand through his lover’s hair, Loras’s short nails tracing patterns on the king’s bare chest. “Renly,” he pressed quietly, turning his face away from the kiss Renly attempted to press to his brow, “did you—“

“No,” came his sister’s voice from the entrance of the tent, where she was letting the flap that served as a door fall closed behind her. “Plenty of time for that later,” she continued, and then, “It’s bad luck for the lord and lady to sleep apart on their wedding night.”

As Loras made to disentangle himself from the embrace of his lover, Margaery climbed into bed on the other side of Renly, having stripped down to her smallclothes. The knight of the kingsguard watched his sister trade whispered conversation with her lord, picking up his tunic and slipping it back on as the hushed discourse seemed to come to a halt.

“Your Grace,” he said with a courteous bow, by way of exiting, “my lady.”

The Knight of Flowers had not been in his own tent an hour when the king half-stumbled in, still a bit tipsy from the feast, more half-asleep than anything. “Your Grace,” he whispered urgently, sitting up in bed. “Should you not be—?”

Renly showed none of the reluctance Loras had earlier, divesting himself of his clothing and sliding into Loras’s sheets like no time had passed, and certainly no marriage. “Had you paid attention, sweet Loras,” he muttered, pressing a kiss to the knight’s lips, “my lady fair did say that we had only to sleep together. Which we did. Your sister kindly woke me and sent me to you—some fable about _snoring_.”

This time, Loras willingly accepted the arms that curled tight around his chest. Eventually, he knew, this—the midnight trysts, the skulking about—would have to cease; the king and queen must needs produce heirs. He said as much to his king, who began to protest, as he did every time the subject was mentioned. “In Dorne—“

“My love, I know what they do in Dorne,” Loras whispered against Renly’s lips, even as he rolled his lord over, mounting his hips with the deftness of moves well-practiced. “We are not in Dorne.”

“More’s the pity,” Renly breathed, pushing urgently at Loras’s smallclothes. “When I am king over Westeros, I shall have a consort.”

Loras caught the king’s hands, stilling them. “I thought you were going to have a tragic accident,” he answered with a warm, wry smile. Renly tugged his hands free of their confines, using them to pull Loras chest-to-chest with him, kissing him with a fire he wished he could rouse for his queen. 

“But first, I shall have my wedding night,” the king murmured against Loras’s lips, and then, as they resumed their previous activities, “Loras, my Loras.”


	3. Gaming/watching a movie

**Day 3: Gaming/watching a movie (G)**

Loras raised one eyebrow as Renly leaned in again; he knew what was coming. It would be the same remark—

“This is _truly_ terrible, Loras.”

—as had been whispered to him in whining tones for the last hour, and, as Loras had been responding for the past hour, so he did again.

“Don’t…let her…get…to you,” he grated out patiently, really, with the patience of the Mother herself. 

Ignorant of the spat going on merely fifteen feet away, the mummers carried on their farce, an overwrought, dramatic tale of clandestine love. Lady Olenna Tyrell had invited a particularly terrible troupe to perform during the feast in honor of the visit of the lord of Storm’s End and his squire, her own grandson; Loras, who knew the cunning old woman all too well, mistrusted her sudden fascination with Renly. It was likely she’d heard some rumor or other concerning the pair, and, knowing that such rumors would be roundly denied if addressed directly, had taken her own tack in dealing with them.

“ _…and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun!_ ” nattered the smitten paramour of the farce, clasping “her” hands upon her breast. “ _O! I have bought the mansion of a love, but not possess’d it, and though I am sold, not yet enjoy’d! So tedious is this day…_ ”

Renly’s voice in his ear again, “Hear, hear.” Loras jabbed him sharply with an elbow.

“ _…as is the night before some festival to an impatient child…_ ”

The squire leaned into his lord, muttering, “ _You_ are an impatient child,” which garnered naught but a chuckle of resignation.

“… _speaks heavenly eloquence!_ ”

“Heavenly eloquence,” what a perfect description of the stream of obscenities Loras was now promising to his lord and lover if he’d only just _behave_ himself in the presence of the Queen of Thorns, really, _Lord Baratheon_ , you’re the very model of propriety _everywhere_ else, are you incapable of showing the proper decorum in the presence of mine own kin…

The lord of Storm’s End now found himself caught between an unpleasant place and a surpassing unpleasant place, torn between nodding and ‘hmm’ing in intervals at his squire’s thorough invective and paying attention to the farce—it appeared to be a tragedy—in front of him. 

In the end, both Renly and his squire made it through the final acts of the farce unscathed, though it was rather a close thing for Renly. He really did allow Loras to get away with too much, he reflected much later, when Loras had helped strip his clothes from him and dutifully attended him in his bath. 

“So dutiful,” he breathed, to a puzzled look from his squire, as Loras slid into the bath next to him.


	4. On a date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll probably upload these in batches of ten every couple of days until they're all up, due to RL time constraints. Happy trails!

**Day 4: On a date (T)**

Leaves gave way, soft and springy, beneath their feet as Renly led Loras through the godswood. When the lord of Storm’s End had grabbed his hand in the yard and urged him to follow, Loras—Ser Loras—had done so without question. Now, they were deep in the forest surrounding Storm’s End and moving deeper, and still Loras had not asked where they were going. He placed a great deal of trust in Renly Baratheon.

“Almost there,” Renly answered the unasked question. 

True to his word, not another five minutes passed before Renly pushed aside a low-hanging branch to reveal a small natural clearing, a high-set brook running into a clear pool at the far side. As Loras took in the sight of autumn, so well-preserved here, letting the sound of the soft-running water set the scene, Renly tossed something at him. Loras caught it on reflex. A peach.

“I thought we might eat,” he said by way of explanation, unceremoniously sitting himself on the ground near the pool, rich clothing and all. He made a pretty sight against the colorful fallen leaves, so pretty that Loras had no choice but to go to him, sitting near enough to the water that Loras could doff his boots and roll up his worn breeches to submerge his feet. The water was bracing cold, but so clear he could see straight through to the bottom. 

Renly slid himself closer over the leaves as Loras took a bite of his peach. “These are from Highgarden,” Loras exclaimed with doting exasperation. “You’re feeding me from my own pantry!” He softened the blow with a peach-flavored kiss on his lover’s lips. True to form, Renly brought his free hand up to cup the back of Loras’s head, sliding through his hair, down his jaw, a small, happy sound making its way from Loras’s throat. 

When they broke apart, Renly smiled his wicked smile and chastened Loras, “Eat your damned peach.”

“Watch your damned tongue,” Loras returned, pulling his lover back to him with significantly more intent. The peaches rolled, forgotten, across the ground. There were many more peaches where they came from. Highgarden’s bounty was near endless.

Loras was fairly certain it was somehow sacrilege—or elsewise, sacred—to the old gods, what he and Renly did in the little clearing in the godswood. He did not know enough of the old gods to distinguish the difference. Afterward, he lay next to Renly on the lord’s own deep-green cloak, catching his breath against his lover’s side. 

It was Renly who spoke, shattering the perfect calm. “Bury me here,” he said quietly, staring at the canopy of trees. When Loras propped himself up on an elbow, looking down at the lord, he continued. “If something should ever happen. I would like to know I was put to rest in death where I was happiest in life.

_What a morbid tangent_ , Loras thought, but aloud, he replied, “Happiest?”

“Here,” Renly repeated, catching Loras in his arms and rolling them so that he was above the knight, resting between Loras’s legs. “With you. At summer’s end.”

After that, they did not speak.


	5. Kissing

**Day 5: Kissing (M)**

When Loras was thirteen years old—not yet a “ser,” but a squire at Storm’s End under its lord—he was caught behind the stables, chatting up a servant girl with talk of chivalry and how things would be when he became a knight. The masters of horse and arms gave no second thought to the boy; thirteen was an age as good as any to know one’s first woman, and so they left him be with nothing but sighs.

Loras’s true trouble began when Lord Renly came looking for him; when the young lord strode up, he was spouting something about the maester and Loras’s lessons for the day, asking where he was (which Lord Renly obviously knew), what he thought he was doing (the servant girl, honestly), and why he was late for his lessons (he was never late before, so he figured he had an excuse). 

Insolent as he was, and headstrong as Renly was, it took the lord standing there as menacingly as possible at such a young age and tapping his foot impatiently to break Loras from his lovely paramour; at length, he pulled his face out of her generous teats and gave her one last kiss, sending her off with a light smack on the rear. She went, pulling up her bodice. Renly stayed. 

“Off to your lessons,” he proclaimed, obviously with more authority than he actually felt he held. 

Loras finished doing up his laces and gave a mock-bow to the lord of Storm’s End. “My lord,” he responded, turning on his heel to head to the castle. 

He should have known; with Renly, it was never so easy. “Loras,” he called after the squire, continuing only after Loras had obligingly halted and turned to face him. “What is her name?”

“Roslyn, Robin—something with an ‘R,’” he finally answered, and Renly swayed to the side a bit, planting a fist on his hip. 

The lord was looking at the ground when he began to speak, but it mattered not. He spoke loudly enough. “Loras,” he stated, “you’re not old enough to know a woman ’til you’re old enough to remember her blessed name.” When Loras turned again, walking once more for Storm’s End, Renly yelled after him, “It’s _Rhaelyn_ , by the way!”

Months later, after Loras had fought in his first tourney, he sought out Renly in his solar once they returned to Storm’s End. When he demanded to know what _this_ was, the building tension between them, Renly closed the distance between them in the bedchamber and pressed his lips to Loras’s, and Loras kissed back and kissed and kissed, breaking contact only when his back hit the wall of the chamber with enough power to knock his breath from him.

Renly was nothing like that servant girl Loras had almost known. The young lord was hard and lean and _strong_ as all the Baratheons, a crop of coarse black hair on his chest and around his sex, and he kissed Loras with the same charismatic force as he did everything, his lips against Loras’s lips, his jaw, his neck, and lower, lower…

“You will not forget my name,” Renly vowed right before he took Loras’s cock into his mouth. “In fact, you’ll be saying it rather a lot soon enough.”


	6. Wearing each other's clothes

**Day 6: Wearing each other’s clothes (G)**

“It’s not for you to wear,” Margaery pleaded with him. “Garlan—“

“Garlan didn’t—not like—not like I did,” her elder brother declared in the voice of a broken man. “If not me, then no one.”

The squire, some faceless Fossoway boy, entreated him again. “Milord, it’s too large. The armor, it’s—“

“Make it fit,” Loras gritted out between his teeth.

Margaery took her brother’s hand. “Let Garlan bear the weight of his ghost, brother, _please_.”

Her brother’s eyes closed, his brow knitting as he breathed a command to the squire. “Take it off.” The young Fossoway did as he was commanded, swiftly if a bit clumsily, and set aside the deep-green plate, excusing himself from the tent and the presence of the two Tyrell siblings. Margaery did not for a second think she had won; she had seen widows and widowers before, but never so fresh-made. She grieved her husband not for herself, but for her brother, who now crumpled to his knees next to the bier where Renly lay, much more solemn in death than he’d ever been in life. 

Loras did not speak; the words he would have said to Renly were meant to stay unsaid. It was not the way of Westeros to act as he and Renly had for years, ever since Loras’s first tourney. It was not Loras’s place to grieve openly for his lover as a wife would her husband. 

Margaery’s voice seemed distant as she spoke to him. “…me help you, brother, I _want_ to help…” 

He unfastened the chain of a pendant he wore around his neck, a golden rose set with emerald leaves and stem, and saw that his hands shook as he re-fastened it about Renly’s cold neck, hiding the flower beneath Renly’s tunic. There was some symbolism to be had there, he thought dismally, and then stood, pressing a fond hand to the side of his former lover’s face before turning to acknowledge his sister. 

“Tell Garlan we ride in three days,” he ordered quietly. Outwardly, he slipped back into the guise of the living, breathing Ser Loras, Knight of Flowers, Lord Commander of the Rainbow Guard. 

In Loras’s heart of hearts, he knew something had died alongside Lord—no, King Renly Baratheon. He was entering into the long, dark night of the soul, where he would never love again, not truly and madly and _inconveniently_ , so inconveniently. He would have followed Renly to the ends of the earth and back, into King’s Landing and right up to the damned Iron Throne.

“When the sun has set, no candle can replace it.”

“What?” his sister replied, unhearing or uncomprehending.

Loras shook his head and exited the tent, repeating his order to tell Garlan that they rode to battle in three days, their army headed by the ghost of Renly Baratheon.


	7. Cosplaying

**Day 7: Cosplaying (T)**

Renly pulled the page’s hat onto his head with a look of purest loathing at Loras. “Those mummers were terrible,” he groused, “and I shall never understand you, Loras Tyrell.”

The young man in question looked positively gleeful as he laced up his bodice. “It’s something…”

“Something,” scoffed the lord of Storm’s End.

“…something novel,” Loras finished, ignoring his lover’s outburst, finishing up the laces and slipping on his gown. “I fear your masquerades have grown dull, my lord.”

“Not _this_ dull,” Renly protested, but halfheartedly; after all, of the two of them, he was not the one wearing a gown. It was _his_ fault, in retrospect; he had been in the mood for a masquerade, and had charged Loras with the task of making this one, on the evening of the Day of All Saints, particularly memorable. So, in less-than-happy hindsight, if his squire had deigned a costume ball particularly memorable, the blame laid upon the man who had charged the ( _addlepated_ ) squire with the task at the head of it.

Said squire was donning his mask as Renly watched, with a chastising, “Don’t worry, my lord. I shan’t so much as approach you.”

That was somehow more frightening than the alternative. “And have crazed women falling over me crying about their doomed Braavosi lover? You’ll attend me at this ball—which, I might remind you, was _your_ idea—as you do at every other.”

Loras, now gowned and masked, sidled up to his lord, pulling him down for a kiss by the brooch pinning his magenta cloak. “Renly… Renly… Wherefore art thou Renly?” he asked mockingly, repeating lines of the farce to which he and Renly had been subjected a scarce month ago. “Deny thy father…and refuse thy name…”

“I _refuse_ to be party to this madness,” Renly countered, lifting Loras, hauling up his skirts so that his lover might wrap his bare legs around Renly’s waist, Loras’s gown pooling around his hips. The lord had achieved his goal of making Loras stop his maddening recitation, but his victory was rather forgotten as he slid his hands up hard thighs, supporting his lover as he bore him backward to the bed, dumping Loras there without ceremony, his skirts rucked up beneath him. 

When he stood again, Loras made a little protesting noise, to which Renly replied, “I’ve gotten dressed in your mummer’s costume, I’ve watched my squire disguise himself in a woman’s gown. I’ve done my good for the nonce.” He forced his eyes away as Loras lay spread out like a common whore (what Renly knew of whores—admittedly, little and less) and stroked himself through his woman’s smallclothes, sighing Renly’s name breathily. 

A smug smile overtook Renly’s face as he waited patiently, face angled away from his lover. It was not long at all before Loras made a frustrated noise and grumbled, “Not working?”

“Not working,” Renly confirmed with a cautious glance down, where Loras was now standing, rearranging his skirts and patting himself back into place with hands that had, like as not, helped dress his sister as a child. “Shall we?” he asked when Loras was done, offering his arm. 

As Loras took it, he said quietly, “But we—“

Renly led his squire out of his chambers with all the aplomb of a lord escorting a highborn lady. “The masquerade starts only when we enter that hall,” he quipped, as they descended the stairs, “and ends when we leave.”

The charged air between them belied the talk of masquerade balls; both lovers knew that Renly was no longer speaking of parties or the Day of All Saints. Beginning at the door of the great hall, the true fabrication began; no one could know of _them_. Let the guests suspect, let them talk. The lord of Storm’s End loved being talked about. Let them _know_ nothing, though.

 


	8. Shopping

**Day 8: Shopping (G)**

“This one?” Loras lifted the hairpin, a lily wrought in silver and inlaid with pearl. Renly shrugged. The Knight of Flowers rolled his eyes. “This one,” he told the merchant, forking over the coin to pay for it. Renly had brought him to market along his side in order to pick out a gift for the princess Myrcella’s name day; his longtime lover had given the excuse that he “knew not what pleases ladies, young or otherwise,” but Loras suspected that being on the king’s small council, surrounded at all times by Varys’s whisperers, was wearing on him. 

They made their slow way through the bazaar, Renly picking up this or that fruit or jam or cask of wine, placing them in the small wayn driven by a steward from the Red Keep. Abruptly, halfway down the market street, Renly turned to the steward, dismissing him. “Take these back to my apartments,” he ordered, and the young lad wasted no time in turning the wagon about, vanishing down the crowded way. When he was out of sight, the lord of Storm’s End turned back to the knight at his side, resuming their trek. “I haven’t gotten a moment of peace since I stepped foot into King’s Landing,” he murmured, pitched only for Loras to hear. 

“Come to my room, then,” the knight responded, in the same low voice. “Surely Varys hasn’t—“

Renly’s whisper interrupted him. “Varys has most certainly posted his _little birds_ ,” he scoffed, “around your quarters. It isn’t safe here, my love.” His voice dropped even lower in volume on the last phrase. The marketplace ended as abruptly as it began at the end of the street, leading onto a row of pleasure houses—owned, if Renly had heard aright, by Lord Baelish himself. The lord of Storm’s End had not had occasion to know for certain. 

Loras’s eyes, the color of late-summer leaves in the sunlight, gleamed with the cleverness of a new-hatched plan. “For old times’ sake, my lord,” he said to Renly, ostensibly just loud enough to be heard over the hum of a crowded marketplace, but in reality loud enough to be heard by paid men, Varys’s and Baelish’s alike, “let me escort you back to your quarters. We should sup together.”

“Of course, Ser Loras,” Renly replied in a like tone, catching on quickly. The lord had not elected to stay in the Red Keep, but elsewhere, in a small subordinate holding of the king, where there were no ridiculous passages in the walls or nooks for whisperers to hide in. Covered windows and barred doors made for some measure of secrecy from the informers that were everywhere at King’s Landing; if they were careful, he and his knight could dine together, and Renly could finally _hold_ and _touch_ and _kiss_ the one person he’d been counting the days to see again.

_Gods be good_ , Renly thought acidly. The sooner he could return to Storm’s End, the better. 


	9. Hanging out with friends

**Day 9: Hanging out with friends (G)**

For all but Brienne of Tarth, being on Renly’s kingsguard had taught them the skills of being selectively blind and deaf. There had never been any solid evidence produced, mind you; if there had, no amount of stubborn denial would have helped the knights selected by Renly to surround him at all times. 

If Renly looked sometimes more fond of his Lord Commander than of his lady wife, well, that was the bond of brothers-in-arms. Nothing else to say, really, as the king’s eyes lingered overlong on Ser Loras’s lips, quirked up in a tiny smile at some jape he’d made—especially good friends, then, or the tie between a squire and his lord, everyone knew that was a close one.

The knights of the Rainbow Guard felt a nameless pity for Brienne the Blue; what brought it on, none would ever be able to say with certainty, but it cast a silent pall over all their dealings with her. Most of the Guard simply named it disdain for a woman who fancied herself a knight.

_Only that, and nothing more_ , Brienne assured herself as she broke bread for the first time with the other knights of the Guard and their Lord Commander, who, truth be told, was quite fetching. She had only ever had eyes for Renly Baratheon, though, and as he requested entry to the guards’ tent, Ser Loras springing up to welcome him, she thought him ten times as regal as he had been when she first danced with him on the Sapphire Isles.

“Brienne!” King Renly exclaimed as he sank down to the left of his Lord Commander, paying her a bright smile. “Excellently done, putting Loras in his place like that!” 

The blue knight attempted to ignore the omission of Ser Loras’s title, instead choosing to blush and mumble a response. “Don’t be so modest,” the king insisted. “It was about time someone beat our fair Ser Loras at his own game. I’d grown tired of winning bets.” His smile turned into a laugh at his own wit, which prompted a narrow-eyed look from Ser Loras. Her own heart seemed to stop for an instant, and then restart in full force. _Married, he is wed_ , she chastened herself, and then Ser Loras was saying something disrespectful about King Renly’s heritage, and Brienne the Blue saw red—

“You had ought to pay the proper respect to your king!” she yelled at her Lord Commander as her fist came down on the table, and immediately regretted doing so, bowing her head as the tent fell silent as a crypt. For a beat, all was quiet, until the king’s roaring laughter shattered the stillness. 

Ser Loras, at least, had the decency to look contrite as the rest of the Guard resumed their meal. King Renly’s laughter died down enough to allow him to speak. “While I appreciate the sentiment,” he said warmly, “I know not what I would do if Loras suddenly began _respecting_ me.” 

If Brienne looked only at the table, she could imagine that warmth was directed at her, and King Renly was not looking to his right at his Lord Commander, seated in a place of honor which he had won but did not _deserve_. She did not have to see, at the end of the meal, King Renly getting to his feet, dismissing himself and Ser Loras with talk of strategy and logistics which needed plotting and planning, bidding them good evening, assigning watch posts to several members of the Rainbow Guard.

_I am a newcomer here_ , she promised herself, _and that is all_. There could be no other reason for her omission from duty tonight.


	10. With animal ears

**Day 10: With animal ears (M)**

The little prince Tommen had looked so happy to crown his uncle with cat’s ears that Renly had yet to take them off, a fact of which he was sorely reminded when Loras saw him next, in Renly’s chambers after the feast for Myrcella’s name day. The acclaimed knight burst into giggles like a boy half his age, tweaking the bright-orange ears with a delicate hand.

“You laugh,” Renly contended, “but he gave me a pair for ‘good Sew Lowas’ as well.” 

Loras was far too easily caught by Renly for a knight of his caliber—he would have to address that issue, surely, if a half-drunk Baratheon could so quickly capture the renowned Ser Loras Tyrell, kissing him gently as he smiled wickedly and and slid the ears on over light brown curls. “Fetching,” he declared quietly, pressing Loras closer to him affectionately.

“Quite,” Loras grumbled, loosening up quickly, nearly as far into his cups as his lover. Renly looked so pleased with himself that the knight let go, loosing a quiet chuckle. “Is there aught else my lord requires for his amusement?” he murmured, burying his hands in thick black Baratheon curls, fingers catching on the band which held the ears in place. 

Renly smiled a slow, intoxicating smile, and Loras could do nothing but lean in and lick it, tongue sliding over his lover’s lips—he tasted of wine, the deep red rather than the Arbor gold Loras had drunk—in a caress they had already had ample time to perfect.

When Loras pulled away from the slow, sultry kiss, meaning to slide Renly’s tunic up and off, he caught a glimpse of the orange cat ears still perched on his lover’s head, now slightly askew, and burst into more hissing, drunken laughter, wrestling the thrice-damned tunic off with significantly more trouble than it was worth. He pressed his forehead to Renly’s bare shoulder and let his laughter overtake him. 

Reluctantly, he heard Renly join in his mirth, kissing the top of Loras’s head and huffing out chuckles into his hair, which quickly turned to gasps as Loras remembered his previous mission, falling to his knees and running the heel of his hand over the front of his lover’s breeches, unlacing him and leaning in to wrap his arms around Renly’s waist, the lord stumbling close enough for Loras to nuzzle his cock, which hardened at his touch even after the wine.

When he took Renly into his mouth, he was giggling at the picture he must have made, Renly’s pet cat, sitting at his feet and lapping at his cock. Ser Loras kept the ears on. Renly minded not at all.


	11. Wearing kigurumis

**Day 11: Wearing kigurumis (M)**

“It…appears to be…” Loras tilted the garment this way and that, Renly’s chin on his shoulder as the lord stood behind him. “…a…”

Renly made a delighted sound; Loras hissed and flinched as his ear rang. “It is a lion!” he exclaimed, and pulled it on over his nakedness, the hood with its floppy ears and mane finding its place atop his head. “I had not ever worn it before, but now I fear I shall be mistaken for a Lannister everywhere I go. For I am never taking it off,” he clarified, throwing himself onto his bed, the knee-length gown flying up and giving Loras a good eyeful of his lover’s lower half.

“Never?” he entreated, jumping onto the bed next to Renly, still unclothed. “I shall become bored with only seeing your calves.”

The lord laughed as Loras flung a leg over him, settling on his hips heavily. “Why, Ser Loras,” he japed, “am I to believe my calves are not _erotic_ enough for you?”

Loras made a little affirming noise, smiling a tiny smile as he rolled his hips once, hard, and commenced sliding down his lover’s silk-clad body until they were chest-to-chest, and then crawling backward until he came upon Renly’s unclothed lower legs. He ran one thumbnail lightly up the arch of Renly’s foot, then all of his nails over the lord’s calves, the backs of his knees, under the gown and over his thighs, until he grasped sharp hips covered in gold silk. Renly’s breath caught and Loras laughed, shoving the silk up. “Wouldn’t want to ruin it,” he teased, before sliding back up to press a kiss to his lover’s lips. “Never?” he asked again, and Renly looked to be revising his opinion, before he answered. 

“Never,” he confirmed, and Loras, defeated for the moment, fell to the bed, groaning his frustration into the mattress, batting Renly’s hand away as it went for his bare back. 

“Never,” Loras declared, raising his head briefly, and Renly laughed again and declared that he was content to go without—if Loras was that put off by his garb, Loras could well enough finish himself off for the rest of his days. Loras bickered back in good humor that Renly could well enough go find himself a nice wife who minded not about his strange taste in clothing. 

Their little spat ended when Loras coughed out a few syllables that sounded suspiciously like, “Cersei Lannister,” and, Renly, disgusted with the thought, pulled off the lion-gown, tossing it to a forgotten corner of his chambers and pulling Loras to him with a muttered, “You win."

 


	12. Making out

**Day 12: Making out (soft M)**

When King Renly heard Ser Loras’s voice singing softly to the Mother, the Father, and the Warrior, he walked quietly into the small makeshift sept, where the Lord Commander of the Rainbow Guard was kneeling, head bowed, hands clasped. When Renly knelt next to him, Loras looked up, his eyes red-rimmed. 

“I’ve never known you to pray,” Renly whispered, running one thumb over Loras’s sharp cheekbone.

“Nor I, you,” Loras hissed back defiantly, “yet here we are.” 

When Renly had requested Ser Loras’s company in prayer, he had not looked for Loras in the sept, but in his own tent—woefully empty, it turned out, of naked, willing knights. Wives as well, but he suspected Margaery had gone to Lady Stark for one reason or another. 

Loras bowed his head again. It seemed that Lady Catelyn’s words had resonated much more deeply with the knight than they had with his king. Renly had never prayed, not properly, and he did not intend to start tonight, on the eve of his battle with Stannis. He was like Robert in that much, at least; Stannis, of the three of them, had always been the most pious. If Renly was to start a war on the morrow, he wanted his last night to be wine, women, and song—only, less wine, and much fewer women. 

When his lover’s shoulders began to shake, though, Renly’s thoughts of Robert fled, and he pressed one hand to Loras’s back, quickly shrugged off as Loras dismissed him in a voice thick with emotion. Renly pulled his hand back to himself, kneeling in silence, head bowed, listening to the knight’s voice rising and falling with the traditional pleas to the gods. 

Neither of them had ever seen war. Renly feared for the realm, and Loras feared for Renly; this was the main difference between them. The king would not cry for the realm; he held out his hope that he could come to some agreement with Stannis, that it would not need to come to all-out war between brothers. He wanted absolutely not at all to contemplate the possibility of failure, and all it entailed.

After a time, Loras was silent, his hitching breaths the only sound in the silence of the little sept. Never lifting his head, he whimpered, “I love you, you know.”

What little resolve Renly possessed, holding him in his position of mock-prayer, deserted him, and he pulled Loras to him abruptly, the knight turning his body so that he might put his arms around his king, much more chaste in the sight of the faces of God than their usual embraces. “I know,” Renly answered gruffly into Loras’s fine curls, holding his lover and Lord Commander until he composed himself. “I am sure your gods heard you.” 

Loras’s skeptical smile was the same, if his eyes were not; as he disentangled himself from his king, he shook his head, “No, you are not.” He stood, brushing off his knees, and Renly did the same. 

_Who could refuse such an earnest plea?_ Renly thought, but said nothing as Loras looked up at him, brushing his face lightly with one hand and turning, heading out of the sept. The king followed, and, to his relief, Ser Loras led the way to Renly’s own tent, ducking past the entryway and pulling Renly in after him. The flap had scarce dropped closed behind them when Loras reeled him in for a deep kiss, whispering Renly’s name in the same tone he had taken with the gods.

Renly pressed closer, allowing his lover to take the lead for tonight, tilting his head back as Loras’s lips moved to his jaw and pressed kisses there, down to his neck, where his teeth left little stinging marks and his tongue lapped over them delicately to soothe them. Loras could no more stop teasing his king than he could cease breathing, and the chance of losing this, the one thing he had valued longer than any other, came upon him like a wave.

As much as he wanted to turn a blind eye to the possibility of failure, Renly set out to commit every inch of his lover to memory, every sound and sigh and plea. Loras’s hands, strong and callused, ran over Renly, first above his clothes, then under them, until he finally had enough and removed their clothes entirely, following everywhere his hands roamed with his lips, warm and chapped and as close to perfect as Renly had ever known or cared to.

“In love with you,” Renly gasped as Loras’s tongue mapped out his hipbones, his cock, his inner thighs. “I am, I mean,” he murmured when the knight returned to his level, pressing a kiss to his lips before spreading Renly’s thighs and setting to work making Renly a religious man using only his tongue.

 


	13. Eating ice cream

**Day 13: Eating ice cream (T)**

No expense had been spared for the Hand’s tourney, and Eddard Stark could not have looked more sullen about that if he were _trying_ , Renly noticed, from a few seats down the high table, where the king and his Hand were seated along with the queen and the members of the king’s small council. As the next course was brought out—one of two desserts, he had heard—the Knight of Flowers, seated with the others who would enter the lists the next morning, caught his eye and raised one tawny eyebrow, flicking his eyes down to his food and then back up to Renly.

If that was they way they would play it, then, Renly was game for Ser Loras’s little challenge. A lewd smile overtook his face as the young knight picked up some of the chilled cream that topped his cobbler in a spoon, licking it off obscenely with a sidelong glance at the high table. Renly made a face and picked up his own spoon, meaning to one-up his former squire; he had only just dug into the sweet cream when Lord Baelish, to his right, leaned over, murmuring in his simpering voice, “Do you think that wise, my lord?” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Renly saw Loras’s back stiffen at the lower table, casting a dark glance up at the one they called Littlefinger, who continued on, “Though I am sure my lord means it only as a jape, these lowborn men do tend to…draw their own conclusions. I would not have my lord’s reputation besmirched.”

Two could play at the game of mocking flattery as well, and few were so practiced as Renly. “My lord’s consideration is flattering,” he replied to Littlefinger with a smile as bright as it was false, “but I know not what you mean.” Down at the knights’ table, Loras was at it again, working at his dessert with all the enthusiasm of a dockside whore; Lord Baelish’s shrewd, watery eyes snapped to the knight and back to Renly, narrowing. 

Those eyes belied the smile that overtook Littlefinger’s thin lips. “Of course,” he affirmed in honeyed tones. “My mistake.”

 


	14. Genderswapped

**Day 14: Genderswapped (E)**

“Is it very difficult to learn the Seven Sighs?” Renly asked her bedmaid, who laughed a musical laugh and ran the cloth down Renly’s back again, the scented steam wafting up from the bath. 

“Difficult…no,” Loryn giggled, running her fingers through her lady’s wet hair. When she leaned down, she was met with a soft kiss from the highborn lady, and she reached down to run one finger over a wet breast, still buried beneath mounds of soft-peaked bubbles. “But it does require a certain dedication and natural talent. The women practice on one another.”

Renly turned around in the water, folding her arms on the edge of the bath, looking up at her bedmaid with interest. “And convincing your lord father to allow you to go to _Yunkai_?”

Loryn’s hands came up to cradle her lady’s face affectionately as she answered. “My lord father thinks only in terms of marriage. What better way to raise my bride price?” The younger woman swayed out of the way as Renly’s wet hands made a grab at her light shift. “No! You’re all wet!” she shrieked happily, grappling with her lady’s grasping limbs.

A loud splash and a shout of, “ _Renly!”_ signaled the lady’s victory as Loryn resurfaced from the bubbles, spitting a stream of water at her conqueror and stripping off the now-ruined silk, tossing it to the floor of the bath-chamber with a wet _plop_. When Renly embraced her, though, she fell into her lady’s arms willingly, soft breasts and soft stomach pressing to hers, followed by those lips again, Renly’s hand slipping under the water to tease at her folds, all gentle intent.

“I don’t want you to marry Stannis,” the young lady of Baratheon whispered. 

“I don’t want you to marry Garlan,” Loryn shot back, Renly’s eyes growing sad upon her as Loryn entwined herself further with her lady, pressing down into the teasing touch with a faint sigh. 

When Renly slid down in the water to lift Loryn up, depositing her on the edge of the bath and toying with one nipple using her teeth and the other with her fingers, Loryn rather lost her train of thought. Between nips and sucks, she was vaguely aware that Renly was detailing a plan—“…and keep you in my bed forever and ever, and we shall never grow old and you will bring me berries and cream and I’ll fuck you ten times a day and we will live happily, forever.”

Loryn pulled Renly up for a deep kiss and then shoved her head down, bidding her lady do something other than talk of fantasy. Renly went at her task enthusiastically, tongue-first, and Loryn, for all her training, could not say which she admired more, the enthusiasm or the approach. Both made her want to press herself further onto Renly, her fingers, her tongue, _something_ , and her hips twitched powerfully, caught between mouth and hand and chest, Loryn’s hand tangled in her lady’s thick black curls.

“Renl—ah—my lady—“ she gasped, as Renly crooked her fingers and stroked over that spot inside her that made everything in her tense up, harder and harder with every press of Renly’s clever fingertips. Those fingers soon found a rhythm in tandem with that caressing tongue, and it was all Loryn could do to stop herself smothering her lover between her thighs, pushing at her lady’s head until it was too much, all too much, and she thrust herself down _hard_ onto Renly’s fingers with a short cry of ecstasy, everything that was tense relaxing, tensing, relaxing in hot pulses. 

“I can’t feel my _toes_ ,” she murmured happily, flopping back onto the chamber floor bonelessly, Renly’s mouth still pressing short little kisses to her thighs, fingers still buried in her. When Renly pulled out, licking her fingers clean even though she was _still in the bath_ , damn her, Loryn sat up with all the impetus she could muster, slipping back into the water and pulling Renly back to her, proclaiming fervently that she must needs return the favor for her lady, if Renly would just hop up to the ledge—

Renly interrupted her with a kiss. “No,” she whispered, and the word tasted of Loryn, and _really_ , was that not lovely. “We haven’t enough time left to us.” She could have been referring to the bath, which was growing cold, or to their impending matches with their husbands; surely, then, they would have to separate, one of them them remaining at Storm’s End and the other leaving for Highgarden. 

Loryn wanted nothing less than to consider that inevitability. She pressed silent kisses to her lady’s lips, her cheeks, her brow, resting her forehead against Renly’s. Their eyes met, hazel on clear blue, and Loryn pulled away, muttering, “Let me bring you a towel, my lady,” as she slipped from her lover’s arms.

 


	15. In a different clothing style

**Day 15: In a different clothing style (G)**

As Renly spread the light, shapeless cloth over the bed, he sighed. “Best not to let Robert know we were given these. Elsewise he should probably command all his favorites to wear them to court.”  
 ****

“His favorite women, you mean,” Loras corrected.

The lord shook his head as he stripped off his court clothing. “A pity for him that he finds court _boring_. Ser Loras,” he interrupted himself, “do assist me with this, I’ve quite forgotten how the Ghiscari do it.”

Loras grumbled mutinously as he wound the gold _tokar_ about his lover. “I came to King’s Landing for a tourney, and I find a _tokar_.”

Renly stood straight, his arms held awkwardly out to the side, as the knight wound the _tokar_ about him. “ _Two_ _tokars_ ,” he corrected, pulling a face. “Courtesy of our good friends to the east.” Loras finished the job quickly, wrapping the silk over his shoulder and stuffing the end into his lover’s left hand unceremoniously. 

Unaccustomed as he was to the Ghiscari garb, Renly hopped shamelessly over to the chest where the second _tokar_ , in crimson—meant for the queen as his own was for the king—lay, a bundle of fringe and silk, eyeing first the _tokar_ , then the Knight of Flowers.

“No,” Ser Loras precluded his lover’s scheme before it had completely formed. The lord’s eyes made their twofold path again, and Loras protested again, more weakly. “Crimson is a terrible color on any Tyrell.” When Renly hopped back over to him, clutching the free end of the _tokar_ , and used his other hand to tug at Loras’s clothes, the knight gave in with poor grace. “I thought you recalled nothing of _tokars_.”

“I am a quick study,” Renly replied happily, meeting obvious difficulty in divesting Loras of his clothing one-handed. 

The knight made very few moves to help Renly in his task. “By which you mean I shall help you or I shall face the trial of a loose _tokar_.” The Ghiscari garment was notorious for coming unwound if not wrapped tightly enough, trailing behind its wearer so that he may step on it and humiliate himself. 

His lover’s answering smile confirmed Loras’s suspicion. The knight rolled his eyes and muttered a curse, but stripped what remained of his clothes. When Renly began his hop back over again to the chest, Loras stopped him mid-journey with a sigh of, “Renly, you’ll brain yourself trying to move about.” The _tokar_ required grace and caution in any movement; its wearers generally travelled everywhere by palanquin or litter, and so did not _need_ to walk. 

Loras fully intended on a reward for so indulging his lover, a sentiment which only grew in his mind as he unravelled the crimson _tokar_ meant for the queen, ignoring Renly’s eyes on his naked form. Wrapping the cloth for the first time about his waist, he made his way back over to the be- _tokar_ ed lord, thrusting the bundle of loose fabric out at Renly. 

“Here,” he groaned as Renly took it from him with unholy glee. 

As Renly began reckoning one-handed with the Ghiscari sheet-garment, Loras helping him more than the knight would ever admit to doing, he asked, “As my…knight—“ This was obviously not Renly’s word of first choice. “—should not anything that makes me happy make you so, as well?”

He would never admit to this, either, but Renly’s job of wrapping the _tokar_ was done more quickly and more efficiently than his own, and correctly, which was a feat in itself. As he took the loose end from Renly, clutching it in his left hand, he replied, “If I indulged all your whims, I should be quite a poor knight. I’d be your bedmaid like as not, and attend you in court wearing naught but a whore’s silk. _No_ ,” he repeated as Renly’s eyes grew distant.

“But—“

“ _No_ ,” he murmured against Renly’s lips, his hard tone belied by the smile he pressed into the kiss. 

Renly’s cry of exasperation as Loras tugged the loose end of the gold _tokar_ from him was almost worth the trouble of winding it onto him in the first place. “I wrapped my gift,” he whispered, a challenge behind the words. “And now I mean to have it.”


	16. During their morning ritual

**Day 16: During their morning ritual (G)**

Back at Storm’s End, Renly’s household had been well-practiced at treating their lord’s eccentricities as the norm. The young lord carried out his duties diligently—in truth, he excelled at his tasks—and, as an odd sort of reward, his servants and guards and masters of what-have-you turned blind eyes, deaf ears, and mute tongues on…whatever their lord may have been doing during his leisure. Or _whom_ Renly had been doing during his leisure.

This excellent exchange of services meant that Loras—the lord’s pretty little squire—jolted awake before he did, and when Renly rolled over, tossing a heavy arm about Loras’s waist, Loras pushed it off, exclaiming, “My lord! It must be almost mid-day!”

“Mmmmmayhap,” was the half-answer, mumbled out as Renly groped about the bed for his lover, only to find that Loras had slid out of bed and was now hurriedly making himself ready for the day, considerably more quickly than he did in the usual morn. 

Never one to be cowed by the absence of his squire-turned-lover in his bed, Renly promptly fell back into slumber, only to be _rudely_ awakened once more by what seemed to be a pair of smallclothes that had taken flight right into his face. The smallclothes were rapidly followed by winged trousers, shirt, and all manner of airborne clothing.

Loras was pulling on his boots, worn from training, with one hand, hopping about on one foot, and lacing the neck of his shirt with the other. Renly sat up, finally, stretching his arms out to the sides, up above his head, yawning. “Aye, mid-day,” he confirmed with a glance out the window. “Pity, I shan’t be able to hear every complaint about stolen cows and vegetable monopolies.”

The gesture his squire managed to make with his shirt-hand could only be called “obscene,” but Loras succeeded in clothing himself right as Renly began to form a reply. “Get out of bed, _my lord_ ,” he mocked, searching through the previous even’s discarded garments for his cloak. Giving up the search quickly with a small noise of defeat, he crossed the chamber quickly to press a kiss to his lord’s lips, ended as quickly as it had begun. 

When it became apparent that Renly had no immediate intention of removing himself from his bed, Loras leaned in and kissed him again, deeper, moving backwards until his lord had to stand in order to maintain the heated contact, the blankets falling away from his naked form.

As Loras broke the kiss, dashing from the chambers with a call of, “The maester may actually poison me this time!”, Renly sighed. 

“A dirty tactic, indeed,” he groused, picking up the clothing, which was not, in fact, winged. Just as Loras was not, in fact, late. 


	17. Spooning

**Day 17: Spooning (T)**

Ser Loras Tyrell knew, beyond any doubt, that the Stranger would come for him. He wished it sooner rather than later, because in life, he was on fire.

He would have cursed his foolishness and his boldness, had he the focus to feel anything but the flames where his flesh had been. Sleep became his comrade-in-arms, whether he buckled beneath the pain and fainted or drank the concoctions tipped down his burned throat by the maesters.  In sleep, he still burned, but less fiercely.

The knight lay abed, unable to move, unable to open his eyes more than a slit, unable to speak. The oil had taken his face, the beauty once coveted by nine out of ten women of the realms (“And the tenth has a preference for women!” Renly laughed), and melted it into a grotesque mask, like wax that had dripped from a candle and frozen in its descent, leaving red trails of bare flesh behind.

Margaery had sent a raven, telling him that women in the streets had cried and mourned and rent their garments in sadness at his injury. A maester had read it to him before dosing him with some potion for sleep. There would probably be songs, Loras thought. The Knight of Flowers and his legendary beauty.

_He would have laughed. He would have laughed and looked at my face and said, “Loras, there’s been a marked improvement!” He would not have mourned anywhere I could hear him…else he would have just swooned._

Dreams of the dead were said to herald the arrival of the Stranger, and Loras gave himself up to them. 

He dreamed he felt his lover behind him, pressed against him from top to toe. Renly had always run hot in life. Loras broke into a sweat. _My love,_ he mused, _I fear I’ve done something stupid_.

A curl of fire licking up his back became Renly’s tongue, sliding up his spine, before his lover settled in behind him again, tossing a solid arm over his chest, so tightly that the knight could hardly breathe. 

Renly’s breath was a flame breaking over his ear. _You take_ so _much looking after,_ his dream-lover sighed, the tone of voice, affectionate and exasperated, exactly as it had been in life. Loras began to shiver, shoulders shaking uncontrollably as Renly’s hands of fire stroked over him gently. 

_Will you look after me?_ His thoughts were a slow murmur, dulled by pain and potion. Renly’s arms tightened around him, fiery-hot and crushing. Loras sighed out a breath.

_I will always look after you_. Renly’s blazing kiss sucked the last of Loras’s air from him, his shivering becoming more violent, then ceasing altogether.

When the maesters entered the sick chamber at Dragonstone, they found the Knight of Flowers, perfectly still in death, a smile on his melted face.

 


	18. Doing something together

**Day 18: Doing something together (G)**

When Ser Loras arrived in the evening at Storm’s End, to present his father’s terms to his former lord, he was met at the gates by one of Renly’s household guard, who greeted him with the familiar courtesy of one who had once taught him how to hold a sword.

“My lord is in his solar, last I heard.” Loras thanked him, gave over what little he had brought to be put in guest chambers, and started his short journey to Renly’s quarters. His visit would come as no surprise; since Robert’s death, Renly had been scheming to become king, and he intended on using his ties to House Tyrell to their utmost.

Ser Loras was given nods and exclamations of recognition, and he counted it both fortunate and near to mad how much this dreary castle by Shipbreaker Bay had become home to him. When he knocked sharply on Renly’s closed door, a voice came from distant within. “One moment!” 

From the noise, it seemed a struggle took place behind the heavy wood, and then Renly opened the door, looking slightly flushed. “Loras!” he cried out, taking the knight’s face in both hands and drawing him in for a sudden kiss. 

Loras pulled back with a raised eyebrow—an expression he had perfected specifically for his lover. “My lord?” 

“Come, come! I have need of your skill.” Loras let himself be dragged into Renly’s chambers by one hand, still road-worn and grimy from riding all day. 

One look at the state of the lord’s quarters and Loras simply sighed, drawing Renly to him and pressing a kiss to his lover’s temple. “I love you.”

Renly appeared to have been in the process of constructing a fortress from the trappings of his bed. Luxurious blankets in forest green, Baratheon black, and gold joined furs and cushions on the floor in a heap. The lord of Storm’s End pulled Loras further in, shutting the door behind them and declaring, “I require structural support.”

Looking around the room, there was, indeed, little that could be used as such. “One moment,” he promised, slipping out of the chamber and down a short hallway to the room where Renly received most of his important visitors. He took two small chairs beneath one arm, a third beneath the other, and dragged them back to the solar.

“Ah!” As Renly arranged the chairs in a rough triangle, Loras pulled over the chair from Renly’s small desk, adding it to the shape. He picked up blankets and furs, draping them across the backs of the chairs with some eye for decoration, weighing down the ends with books. Renly sat on the floor and arrayed the cushions inside the spacious cavern, crawling inside with all the dignity of a small child. 

Once Loras had finished his task, Renly peered up at him. “Enough room for another.”

Loras laughed at the figure his former lord cut, stating, “I’d sooner bathe.” Renly looked scandalized. Mayhap he was not _so_ dirty, after all… Divesting himself of his cloak and boots, the renowned Knight of Flowers crawled into the cave. 

No sooner had he done so than Renly declared that wine would make this the best fortress this side of Winterfell, scrabbling to his feet and calling for a servant to bring a flagon of sweet red. When Renly returned, it was with two goblets, and he knelt, handing one in to Loras and setting the other on the floor as he wormed his way back in.

Absolutely nothing was said of Mace Tyrell between giddy kisses that night, and the morn found them still in their handmade cave, sleeping half on top of one another, an empty pitcher and two empty goblets strewn across the floor.

 


	19. In formalwear

**Day 19: In formalwear (G)**

“Do you think Stannis will be very angry if I treat with him wearing this?” Renly held up the forest-green doublet, pressing it to his front. 

“I think _Stannis_ ,” Loras replied carefully, shifting his weight to one side, “shall be very angry no matter what you wear, Your Grace.” From across the king’s tent, Brienne of Tarth looked an amalgam of uncomfortable and cross. Doubtless, her Lord Commander’s affixation of King Renly’s proper address did not satisfy her sense of—Loras knew not what. 

Propriety, mayhap. Decorum. Ser Loras was snapped out of his considerations by the king’s declaration that his wardrobe was worthless, but, “Of course, you, Loras, look resplendent in your armor. Does he not, Brienne?”

Brienne’s stoic expression betrayed itself only by a twitch of a brow as she responded. “Yes, Your Grace.”

Renly’s eyes fell hot on him as Loras said flippantly, “I look resplendent, and Your Grace looks half-clothed.” The blue knight of the Rainbow Guard gave what seemed a full-body spasm of irritation, which Loras studiously ignored. 

Even so, the king noticed. “Brienne, is aught the matter?”

“No,” she gritted between her teeth, “Your Grace.” Brienne stepped forward to help her liege with his chosen raiment, not altogether different from the attire he had presented to begin with. For all his fuss at choosing his habit, it took mere minutes for the blue knight to get him into it. 

When he judged himself ready, Renly’s eye turned on Loras once more, his stare still heavy. “Not the armor, I think.”

Ser Loras liked to think he had refined the art of the insolent blink especially for Renly. “Your Grace requested I wear this set only yesterday.” The king said nothing, only raked his gaze slowly up Loras’s armor-clad form. Back down. And up again. Loras quashed the urge to laugh or to do some other wildly-inappropriate thing, instead calling up a mummer’s courtesy. “Of course. I would not want Your Grace—“ Oh, but he _would_. “—distracted at your meeting. I shall change forthwith.”

The king cleared his throat before he spoke again. “Yes, see that you do. Brienne, with me. Ser Loras,” he dismissed himself far too curtly, bowing out of his tent with all haste, leaving Loras to chuckle fondly before heading back to his own tent to reconsider his choice of vestment.


	20. Dancing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last batch soon to come! Thanks for reading. ^_^

**Day 20: Dancing (T)**

The festivities celebrating Loras’s anointment as knight had been Garlan’s idea. Highgarden, he had said, was in sore need of some well-mannered frivolity, and Lord Renly had seconded the notion as soon as he got wind. The lord of Storm’s End had always been fond of their Loras.

Margaery would have sworn in the sight of the Seven that she danced with every man in the hall, every one of them a potential suitor, every one of them too lowborn. Her father would never agree, and, if perchance he did, Margaery had her schemes for getting out of a deal.

It was a slightly-winded Margaery Tyrell who made her way out of the grand hall, into the atrium that stood before it, seeking solitude and whatever fresh air she could find. Instead, she heard peals of laughter and an indignant raised voice.

“I’m not the girl, _you_ be the girl!” The laughter grew in volume. “Stop _laughing_ , you cunt!”

She recognized the voice before she set her eyes on its owner, halfway down the floor of the spacious atrium, held in Lord Renly’s arms. Even as she watched on, her brother leaned in, fisting one hand in Renly’s Baratheon-black curls and tugging, to a wince from the lord; she did not expect the fierce kiss that followed, nor the blush that rose in Loras’s cheeks as Renly broke away, leading her brother in the same slow dance that was enjoyed by the other revelers in the grand hall. 

Gears turned in Margaery’s head as she contemplated the scene, a distant voyeur. 

Her brother, the knight, let himself be led, uncommonly quiet. “You learned well,” Renly’s soft voice floated to her, bouncing off the high ceiling. Mid-dance, the pair switched roles, Loras now the lead, but no less capable for it. 

When the song came to an eventual end, Margaery saw fit to make her presence known. “Brother!” she called, and the pair sprang apart as she approached. 

“M-Margaery!” She paid no heed to the stammer in her brother’s voice as she kissed first him, and then Lord Renly, stretching onto her toes for the latter. “What are you—?”

She smiled her winningest smile. “So many men in one place, all hoping for the same honor… It does wear. I’m afraid there is no blood being shed, either, so I am, of course, weary.” Lord Renly grew a bit pale at the mention of blood. 

Loras saw right through her cheer, irritating elder brother that he was. “Don’t tell father,” he warned her. She turned her winsome smile on the knight. 

“I had not thought of it, dear brother.” She kept her tone carefully light. “I want nothing more than your happiness. And my lord’s,” she amended, dropping a short curtsey to Renly. It went unsaid that their happiness was their damnation in the eyes of the realm, and Margaery’s closed mouth meant that rumor remained simply rumor.

Loras’s eyes, so similar to her own, narrowed. “In return for what?”

She returned the expression. “A favor.”

Renly granted it to her promptly, more fool he, and she inclined her head. “My lord is kind. I expect we shall see much more…” She drew her eyes down his form, strong-framed like all the Baratheons. “…of one another.” 

He had a brother, this one, Margaery pondered as she made her way back into the grand hall. A brother with _power._ Now Lord Renly owed her a favor, and she intended to use it wisely.


	21. Cooking/baking

**Day 21: Cooking/baking (G)**

“Loras, fan me.”

The young squire, as yet unused to his lord’s…Renly-ness, widened his eyes a bit with innocent inquiry. “My lord?”

Lord Baratheon adjusted his cloak behind him, then wiped a hand across his brow. “I knew not how _hot_ it would be here,” the lord complained, posture slumping slightly where he stood, leaning against a tree.

“Highgarden is over the next rise,” Loras pointed out hesitantly.

“And I want naught to do with _moving_.”

Loras had not known when to hold his tongue when he was a boy at Highgarden, and he had not learned since leaving to squire for the young lord. “It is not so much warmer here than at Storm’s End,” he argued, and Renly cast him a doleful look. “Has my lord of Baratheon never been to the Reach before?”

“Renly, please.” Loras pressed his lips together. “ _Lord_ Renly, if you must. My brother is…indeed, both of my brothers are the ones who give a damn about titles. I give a damn about results. And the certainty of cooking in my clothing if we do not stop here for a few moments,” he added cattily.

The squire made a valiant effort not to roll his eyes, failed, and heard a mocking noise in response from the lord still slumped against his tree, sipping at water Loras had produced from a saddlebag. “In answer to your question, no. I never went to Highgarden. All the—arrangements—were made by Robert, like as not in King’s Landing, and like as not by one of his advisors in his stead. I merely do as my king commands.” 

For all of Renly’s seeming flippancy, Loras had learned quite fast that Renly Baratheon was a dutiful lord, a quick wit, and would, in his time, become a masterful diplomat. It seemed evident, then, that Lord Renly had been the shrewd mind between the alliance with Highgarden, and behind Loras’s excellent treatment at Storm’s End.

If it was not so, a new light was cast on their interactions—what there had been of interactions between the squire and his lord. Loras mostly trained with the masters-at-arms and learned the mysteries of triangles and squares from the maester, of late. Be that as it may, Lord Renly had never treated him as anything other than a favored steward. 

Loras tried for an understanding smile as he approached his lord, unfastening Lord Renly’s cloak. “Mayhap my lord would be cooler if he removed the blanket around his neck.” Renly shrugged out of the heavy cloth obligingly, letting Loras fold it and stuff it into a saddlebag. With one last lusty drink of water, Renly declared that Loras was correct, and suggested they move on to Highgarden.

“Yes, my lord.” Loras succeeded in his effort at not rolling his eyes this time, but did not quite manage to keep it from his voice.


	22. In battle, side by side

**Day 22: In battle, side by side (E)**

“This was not the battle I had in mind—“ Loras arched his back, hips lifting from the table as Renly tightened around him. “Doing that—on purpose,” he ground out, reaching out to still the king’s movements. “Cunt,” he added for good measure, and Renly laughed.

That did something interesting to the way their bodies intertwined, and while Loras gasped heavily, his lover took in a shuddering breath and loosed it on a soft moan. “ _Move,_ ” he demanded, hand braced against Loras’s chest.

Loras was the one to laugh this time, prompting a sharp inhale from Renly. “You abduct me from my own tent under guise of _strategizing_ for _battle_ , climb atop me, and then venture to give me _orders_.” 

The king shifted, Loras’s cock brushing the spot deep inside him that made his limbs melt and his heart jump in his chest. “You are— _mm—_ a member of my Guard, are you not? _Yes—_ “ he hissed out as Loras arched again, the sturdy desk beneath them making a slight creak of protest. The battlefield maps lay forgotten on the ground.

“I am,” Loras breathed as Renly finally began moving, holding Loras down on the desktop as he fucked himself hard and fast, the crown he’d placed on the edge of the desk coming perilously close to joining the maps.

“L-Lord Commander, if I recall,” the king forced out, his free hand moving to take his own cock in hand, flushed and beginning to leak onto his belly. “You have a duty to h-help me, ah, plan our next move— _Loras_!” he cried out in surprised indignation as Loras grabbed him, reversing their positions quickly, the king exhaling sharply as his back hit the wood.

Loras leaned down to drop a kiss to Renly’s open lips as he pressed deeper into that heat, any further utterance from the king becoming incoherent as Loras commenced fucking him in earnest, Renly’s thighs falling open as the Lord Commander of the Rainbow Guard lifted his king’s lower half, pulling him onto his cock even as he thrust in.

Renly’s hand sped over his own member and then lost its coordination completely as the king spilled his seed onto his own stomach with a soft cry, Loras finding his own release in the repeated spasm of Renly’s muscles around him.

Of necessity, it was only a short time after that the knight pulled out of his lover, wiping away the better part of the mess of seed on himself and on Renly with a kerchief, pulling his smallclothes and breeches back up as the king set out in search of his own clothing. 

The crown finally had enough, pitching itself off of the desk and hitting the ground with a clunking noise as Renly stood, shirt in one hand and smallclothes in the other. 


	23. Arguing

**23: Arguing (G)**

Renly pressed his hand to Loras’s shoulder as they roamed the corridors. “You always make that face when you have something unfortunate to say.” The knight’s long silence only confirmed his suspicions. “Loras,” he entreated, moving his hand down to interlace their fingers. 

Ser Loras accepted the point of contact, giving his lover’s hand an anxious squeeze. “My father would have me present the terms of the proposed alliance.” The dark expression on the knight’s face blackened.  The pace of their stroll through Storm’s End slowed as Loras laid out the terms of Lord Tyrell’s partnership with Renly, prompted by the lord’s silence. 

“…and, as you are a third son—and my father last rode with House Lannister—he intends one more addendum to his terms.” Ser Loras sighed, fingers tightening over Renly’s hand. “In order to further tie our houses together, he proposes that you marry my sister, Margaery.” Loras’s voice grew hollow as he neared the end of his statement, and he stopped walking completely.

Renly halted as well, dropping Loras’s hand gently. “I understand. Tell your father I will meet all of his terms, and I await his arrangements for the wedding with…unmatched eagerness.” He took a step back, making a short bow to his lover. “I trust you know your way out.” He turned to continue down the corridor.

“Renly,” Loras called after him, and the lord—king, if he had his way—paused. “Is there—aught else?”

The instant Renly faced his lover again, Loras saw a man defeated by his own duty. “Ser Loras,” Renly began patiently, “I cannot mean to marry your sister and carry on with—“

“We wanted to give her to Robert. _She_ wanted us to give her to Robert. And now she wants the newest claim to the throne.” Loras refused to acknowledge that his voice had taken on a pleading tone.

It fell on deaf ears. “Your lord father has named his terms. You would do well to—“

“ _Renly!_ ” Anger now bled into the plea, and Renly was no longer deaf.

“ _Loras!_ ” he mocked. “ _Someone_ with half a wit needs to sit on that damned chair at King’s Landing, and I’d much rather it not be _Stannis_ —and if I have to marry your sister, her handmaidens, and Lady Olenna all, _so be it_.”

His words sent a visible shock through his lover. “’Tis not the _marriage_ I take issue with—“

“‘ _With which I take issue’_ —“

“Do I seem concerned with _grammar_ , my _lord_? I have served you well—“

“Not so well at the moment—“

“ _Renly!_ ” Loras put a hand to his brow, smoothing it with firm fingertips. “I care not who— _whom_ you marry. Only that I—“ The knight sighed out a deep breath. “Kings are seldom faithful to their queens. Margaery _knows_ what we—have. Given a choice, she would choose queendom over a dutiful husband.”

Ser Loras was too far away to see the pain behind the hardened expression that had taken over his lover’s features; he could only tell that Renly looked more like a Baratheon than he ever had, stern and commanding. “You are right on all counts but one, Ser Loras,” Renly declared, quiet and cold. “A matter of grammar, as it happens. ’Tis not what we _have_ , but what we _had_. If I am to marry your sister, I intend to be both faithful and dutiful, as well as to give her the _queendom_ she desires.”

All too visibly, the soul inside Loras broke. “Yes, my lord. I was out of line. Forgive me.” He made a short bow. 

“‘Your Grace,’ soon enough. Please carry my acceptance of all terms to your lord father.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Once more, I trust you know your way out. The old gods and the new protect you on your journey.”

Renly turned, walking away from Loras as if he had not just ended the great love of both their lives. His head remained high, his back straight. 

_The posture of a king_ , Loras observed with a sharp edge of bitterness.


	24. Making up afterward

**Day 24: Making up afterward (G)**

“…further suggests delaying the wedding itself until the banners have rallied,” the knight finished as Lord—no, King Renly let the scroll spring back into its previous shape. “He guarantees them within a fortnight, as well as a septon to bless the union between Margaery and you.”

Renly tossed the scroll onto his desk. “Yes, I can read. The Roseroad is dangerous of late.”

Ser Loras’s face made no change as he replied. “My lord father will send a host behind me anon to escort you safe to Highgarden, Your Grace. Tyrell bannermen will meet you there.” 

The new-proclaimed king gave a curt nod. 

“Will that be all, my—Your Grace?” 

Behind his desk, Renly’s perfect posture collapsed and he put one elbow atop the wooden table, bracing his brow against the heel of that hand. “No, Loras. Please. Sit.”

Ser Loras made a small, stiff-backed bow. “If it please m-Your Grace, I would sooner remain standing.”

A pregnant pause stretched across the drawing room, until, at length, the king broke the weighty silence. “I don’t want to marry Margaery.”

The knight’s stoic expression twitched in some intense, unnamed emotion. “Your Grace must needs do what you think best for the realm.”

Still slumped onto his arm, King Renly nodded. “No,” he stated. “I need to marry your sister, and we _shall_ be wed. For the good of the realm.” The king cleared his throat roughly. “But I do not _want_ to marry her.”

“Your Grace?” Loras inquired, all flawless highborn manners.

Across the desk, Ser Loras noted that Renly’s shoulders had begun to shake. “Love is—a rather enduring emotion, I find,” he hedged, voice trembling just as his shoulders. The king sniffed, sitting up and letting his arm drop to his desk as he looked up with moist eyes at the knight standing on the other side of the table. “And I love you so.”

Loras’s impassive mien crumpled, his breath shuddering out of him. “ _Duty_ and _faithfulness_?” he held his ground, crossing his arms. In response, the hand Renly had rested on his desk flew over his mouth and a short, hoarse sob escaped his throat. 

“Gods help me, Loras,” the king whispered, and the knight rounded the table whilst Renly pushed back his chair; Loras fell to his knees in front of his lover and wrapped his arms around Renly’s waist as he let relieved sobbing take him as well. The king’s hands ran fitfully through Loras’s curls as he cried, only saying over and over, “I love you. Gods, but I love you so.” 


	25. Gazing into each other's eyes

**Day 25: Gazing into each other’s eyes (T)**

Loras grimaced down at the bruise on his side. The young lord at his bedside grimaced as well. “Gruesome,” Renly commented.

“Only a bump. The rib is unbroken.” He poked gingerly at the mottled flesh, red and yellow and green and purple. When a bruise was that color red, it went deep, and his curious finger prompted a hiss of pain and pique from the bedridden squire. 

Renly rearranged himself in his chair. “The master-at-arms apprised me of what happened.” He uncrossed his legs, leaning toward his squire. “Loras…you must be more careful.”

His words were met with a snort of injured pride. “I was _unhorsed_ , and this is merely a scrape. If I’m to be a knight—“

Loras cut himself off as Renly’s hand moved to cradle his face carefully, eyes searching for Loras’s gaze and meeting it. Holding it as a heavy silence took over the room. Profound concern and devotion found their way onto the lord’s face. Loras lifted the hand of his uninjured side to press it over Renly’s, never breaking their gaze. He stroked his fingers softly over the lord’s. “I cannot promise you caution. I can promise to get—better. One day, I may even unhorse the Kingslayer,” Loras attempted to jape.  

The lord just smiled a sad smile, his eyes belying the expression. “I would be very distressed, were you to—“

The squire scoffed, then winced in pain. “Oh, don’t be melodramatic.” He slotted his fingers in between Renly’s on his cheek. “I’ve a thousand reasons to live. Knighthood, for a start.”

Renly’s eyes broke the contact between them as he said quietly, “I believe I may love you, Loras.”

Another pause, less weighted than the last. “How?” Loras demanded, a note of challenge behind the word.

“Not…not as a brother, or a son, or a squire.” Renly sighed. “As what we are, I suppose.” 

Of everything in the world, he did not expect the elated smile that broke over his lover’s face, nor the way he turned his face delicately to press a kiss to Renly’s palm. When Loras next spoke, it was half into Renly’s skin, the squire’s breath warm against his flesh. 

“There, then. A fresh reason. If I were a knight, I’d fain wear your token into a joust.” The lord looked almost risibly relieved, and Loras laughed once and promptly winced again. “My lady,” he mocked. Renly gave his squire and lover a dark look. Loras kissed his palm once more and whispered, “I may love you, as well.” 

The lord rose from his chair, rounding the bed and fitting himself against Loras’s good side with utmost caution. The squire put his arm around Renly’s shoulders, turning his head to meet the lord’s lips in a slow kiss. “You’re wearing far too many clothes,” Loras muttered when they parted, and Renly breathed out a laugh.

“You only just promised to—“

“I said no such thing,” Loras interrupted. 

“There is no, er, permutation that would not—“ 

Loras quieted the lord with another kiss, just as chaste as the last. “At least the coat and boots.”

Renly stood as mindfully as he had lay down, removing the requested articles of clothing. “You know,” he grumbled as he slid back into the bed, “some say the beauty most desired is the—“ Loras kissed him. “—beauty concealed,” the lord finished, aligning their bodies once again. 

The injured party lifted an eyebrow skeptically. “I most desire you…hm, naked, but for perhaps your boots, the soft leather ones. Hard and wanting, and inside me…beneath me…you are so strong, Renly, ’tis like fucking a—“

What it was like fucking, Renly never discovered, as he pressed his lips to Loras’s again, the squire’s hand slipping down to unlace his lover’s breeches.


	26. Getting married

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was my favorite.

**Day 26: Getting married (M)**

If a particular rumor was to be given credence, a particular son of House Lannister had once married a whore for two silvers and however much it had cost to get a septon well and truly drunk. The bride’s cloak had been a sheet of silk, the groom’s a cut burlap sack. The marriage had been a happy one, while it lasted.

Lying side by side, naked beneath the covers on Renly’s bed, this rumor came to Loras’s mind. He rolled over, half on top of the king who shared the bed. “I don’t want you to marry Margaery,” he seconded Renly’s earlier words. “You need to, and you should. But know that I like it not.” His declaration was accompanied by a sly smile down at his lover.

The king’s countenance showed slight discontent. “I don’t want you to marry…” His voice pitched up at the end, as if in consideration, but the statement never concluded.

“What, at all?” Loras giggled, stroking a hand down the side of his lover’s face. His eyes alit on the ring on his finger, a plain rose wrought in gold. He rolled off of Renly, searching for a strip of cloth—linen, brocade, anything. He found linen, meant to bandage wounds, in his own belongings, and returned to the bed with it, tugging at Renly’s hand until he sat up, back braced against the head of the bed next to Loras’s.

He laid the linen atop the covers, sliding his rose ring from his finger; Renly had a similar one, a small silver stag, less ostentatious than the typical Tyrell fare. “Take off your ring,” he requested, and it spoke to the strength of their relationship, even after the recent upset, that Renly did so without asking a reason. 

Loras picked up his own ring, taking his lover’s hand in his. “I haven’t a cloak to give you,” he explained as he slid the metal onto Renly’s fourth finger, close enough in size to Loras’s that it went over the knuckles easily. Loras put on Renly’s stag ring with something like reverence, and then took up the linen strip, laying his hand atop Renly’s in the air and winding the cloth about them lightly, joining them.

“Now,” Loras said quietly, casting a glance at his lover, who looked like he was quite affected by the little mummer’s farce of a ceremony. “I think we just say the words.” 

Their eyes met, and after a brief pause, they said together, “Father, Smith, Warrior, Mother, Maiden, Crone, Stranger. I am his, and he is mine, from this day until the end of my days.” Loras unbound their hands, leaving the rings in place, and tossed the linen to the floor, pulling his lover’s face to his for a kiss, the king looking near to tears.

“I love a good bit of sacrilege,” Renly japed, voice thick with emotion. 

“You’ll adore my sister, then,” the knight answered, a single tear finding its way down his cheek. “False piety is her specialty.” Renly dragged him in for another kiss, earnest and affectionate, and Loras moved to sit astride the king’s hips, grinding down against him as their kisses grew heated.

Renly’s hands settled on Loras’s bare backside as he pushed up against his lover. “And you?” he inquired.

The knight laughed against Renly’s caressing lips. “I’m quite traditional. I’ve pretended to wed you in the scowling eyes of the Seven, and now I mean to bed you.”

“Not pretending at that, though, I hope,” Renly teased, already tracing a finger around Loras’s rim slowly, reaching his free hand over to the edge of the bed, where, by some miracle, the phial of scented oil had not yet fallen onto the floor. 

“No- _oh_ , not in the least,” Loras moaned as the first finger slid into him. “I intend to fuck you both thoroughly and genuinely.”


	27. On one of their birthdays

**Day 27: On one of their birthdays (G)**

“A raven from Highgarden,” the maester said by way of explanation as he handed the scroll to Renly, who broke the seal, scanning the contents of the letter quickly, then reading it again more slowly.

_Dearest brother_ , it began, _I would that this reaches you on your name day, but the seventh is so much closer than I anticipated. I wish you a joyful name day, and Father wishes me to tell you he does, as well, and that he has a gift for you at Highgarden, which you shall receive upon your next visit. I hope this message finds you in good health and good cheer, and that I may see you soon. I miss you, Loras, and Father misses you and our brothers miss you, though they say it seldom enough. Happy name day, brother dear. All my love, Margaery Tyrell._

Renly let the parchment spring back into a roll, tossing it onto his desk. “Thank you, maester. I shall see that this makes its way into Loras’s hands myself.” The maester bowed out of the room, and Renly set off in search of his young squire.

He found Loras on the way to the maester’s chambers, presumably coming in from practicing with sword or lance for his lessons. “Loras!” he called, and the boy’s attention landed on him. Renly proffered the scroll, explaining as Loras reached for it, “A raven came for you, from your sister.” 

“Thank you, my lord,” Loras said politely, not opening it. “Like enough she writes for my name day.” 

“Is it your first away from home?” Renly inquired, and Loras nodded. “Blessed name day, Loras,” he said happily. “I knew not, or I would have gotten you a gift. Would you like me to cancel your lessons with the maester today? I know how fond you are of the triangles.”

Loras smiled at him, looking younger than his years—only a handful younger than Renly himself. “Thank you, my lord!” 

“Think nothing of it.” Renly made to go intercept the maester, but Loras called him back. 

“My lord?” When Renly turned to him, he continued. “I would enjoy if you would ride with me. It _is_ my name day.”

The lord of Storm’s End found it hard to deny his squire much anything, let alone a simple request. “Of course,” he submitted, “once I’ve told the maester.” 

Loras looked positively gleeful as he turned and ran down the corridor, yelling over his shoulder, “I’ll be at the stables! Don’t be slow or I’ll leave without you!” and then, as an afterthought, “My lord!”

In future endeavors to pinpoint the exact moment he and Loras had begun to fall in love, Renly would say it was then. Loras would put it much later, but Loras was notoriously contrary, which Renly had good cause to know. Good-natured bickering would ensue, and would be interrupted by Margaery’s entrance into the room, in reality a tent, to explain that _she_ knew when they began to fall, and suggest they clothe themselves before she did something untoward to one or both of them.


	28. Doing something ridiculous

**Day 28: Doing something ridiculous (G)**

“I am a knight. They call me ‘Garlan the Gallant,’” Garlan groused, and Renly cast him a commiserating look. 

“I am lord of Storm’s End.” The lord’s voice was slightly more forced than Garlan’s, owing to his heavier burden. Loras, atop him, place a well-aimed smack on his backside and commanded him to go forward, lowering his lance—a long cylindrical pillow Margaery had conjured from some depth of Hell—and raising his shield, a wooden practice shield like as not lifted from the armory.

Margaery, atop her second-eldest brother, did the same, tilting at Loras with a cry of delight. Garlan, like his fellow horse, looked miserable, crawling along the floor of the great hall with exasperated grumbling noises. “Garlan, you make a truly detestable horse,” the young woman complained, tugging at her brother’s hair in hopes of speeding him up. 

“At least you don’t have to ride the _Lord of Storm’s End_.” Loras said his title in a voice dripping with disdain, and Renly would have put coin on the squire shaking his head sadly. 

“Garlan’s arse is just bony enough to be uncomfortable,” Margaery whined, and her steed made a loud noise of protest at his treatment. “Lord Renly’s got a nice arse!”

Renly puffed up at the compliment, but forgot to continue his forward motion, which prompted another smack. “I have no spurs,” Loras said by way of apology. 

“You enjoy hurting me,” Renly grumbled, with another sympathetic glance at Garlan. 

“I’m _hardly_ hurting you,” Loras protested, patting his lover’s rump gently in contrition.

The jousters’ lances hit, glanced, and then they were past one another, rounding the “lists” atop their steeds, the elder of which carped, “Are you not both far too old for this sort of nonsense?”

Margaery patted her brother’s shoulder patronizingly. “I could ask you the same, brother. I’ll never be allowed to joust. So I’ll unhorse the callow youth who will one day manage to unseat the Kingslayer and call my jousting career a success. Now, forward!”

The next time he and Garlan crawled past one another, Loras astride him and tilting at his sister, Renly pitched himself to the side, dumping Loras on the floor unceremoniously with a yell of, “Mutiny!” Loras stared up at him first in shock, and then with a look of utmost malice as he jumped up and commenced chasing Renly through the room, intent on murder.

Margaery dismounted from her brother’s back, straightened her skirts, and declared, dignity perfectly intact, “Looks like I’ve won, brother. Garlan, you’ve been a most noble steed.”


	29. Doing something sweet

**Day 29: Doing something sweet (G)**

“… _And Visenya Targaryen rode atop—_ “ Renly looked down at the knight-to-be in his lap. “Loras?”

The fine Tyrell features stirred in half-sleep. “Did not,” he murmured thickly, burrowing down further into the space he’d made between Renly’s legs. “’S just you.”

Shaking his head, Renly returned to the book, an history of Targaryen conquests which Loras had found in his old bedchamber. No more than a page later, the lord determined that his lover was, most like, fast asleep, head pillowed against Renly’s thigh. 

Renly had never been particularly bookish, and he saw no need to finish his recital of the Targaryen rulers and their feats. He closed the book and cast a gaze around Loras’s quarters at Highgarden. The squire’s family had kept it much as it had been before their youngest son had left for Storm’s End, down to the toy dragons and swords Loras had played with as a child. 

“You are utterly wasted on me,” he whispered down at the head of curls. If his masters of horse and arms had not been so excellent, Loras would never have become the young man he was, skilled beyond his years in lance and sword and riding. The lord of Storm’s End was no slouch, but it was well-known that his true talents lay elsewhere.

Loras shifted again, running a hand along Renly’s thigh sleepily. “Used to think so.” Not fast asleep, then. Renly ran his fingers through the soft brown hair, and the squire pushed into the touch with a happy, drowsy noise. 

Renly kept his hand moving gently. “No more?” he inquired, and Loras sighed languidly, shaking his head minutely.

“Turned out well,” the squire managed before he fell asleep once more, but it was enough to bring a tiny smile to the lord’s face. 


	30. Doing something hot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last ficlet! I'm working on arranging them all into a semi-coherent narrative, so just stay tuned for the final chapter! Thanks for bearing with me thus far; this is my first foray into the craziness of GRRM's canon, and I'm glad to know people are reading my scribbles. :)

**Day 30: Doing something hot (M)**

Loras let himself be pulled into the small council chamber with only a few quiet protests, mostly limited to, “Renly? _Renly!_ ” The Red Keep was asleep, the hour of the wolf far upon its inhabitants, and still Renly was awake, dragging his lover around the castle for reasons Loras wished were beyond him, but to which he could hazard an educated guess.

When the lord closed the chamber doors behind them with a wicked smile, Loras’s worst fears were confirmed, and he protested a bit more fervently, what if someone _saw_ , what if they were _caught_ , and Renly just pulled the knight to him, kissing him fiercely. “Would not—“ Loras tried when they broke for breath, “your chambers—be more appropriate?” 

In answer, the lord pulled out a chair—presumably his own—and pushed his lover into it demandingly, reaching down to unlace Loras’s clothes, vest, shirt, breeches, his lips falling upon Loras’s again and making him breath in deep gasps. “You must be quiet,” Renly said, a heated challenge behind the words as he knelt.

The task became much more difficult as the lord’s lips moved over Loras’s flesh, all teasing teeth and tongue, followed by roving hands and raking nails, leaving trails of possession all across the knight’s body. 

Loras put a hand over his mouth gently as Renly slid the knight’s breeches and smallclothes down his thighs, freeing his member. The lord put his mouth to good use, taking most of him into that delicious heat, and Loras’s hand tightened over his mouth, his breath coming in ragged pants through his nose.

His free hand tangled in jet-black curls, pushing Renly further onto him, the lord taking it with only a sultry chuckle that slithered up Loras’s spine, pushing his hips into Renly’s mouth. Loras dropped his hand from his own mouth, clutching the edge of the small council table and breathing hard, but making no noise otherwise.

Renly had no such compunctions, making first a steady stream of approving noises, and later a long, quiet moan against Loras’s member as the knight’s hips lost rhythm, his seed spilling into the lord’s mouth with a shudder from Loras. Renly swallowed with the ease of one of Littlefinger’s kept girls, lapping at Loras’s spent cock until the knight pulled him off with the hand in his hair, up for a kiss that tasted of Loras.

“You’re mad,” Loras panted against his lips, and Renly had the good grace to concede. 

It was a good thing, he considered as Loras switched their positions deftly, that he had found someone as mad as he.


	31. Bonus chapter: The road so far

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter of this craziness! Thanks for sticking with me!

 

“Loras, fan me.”

The young squire, as yet unused to his lord’s…Renly-ness, widened his eyes a bit with innocent inquiry. “My lord?”

Lord Baratheon adjusted his cloak behind him, then wiped a hand across his brow. “I knew not how _hot_ it would be here,” the lord complained, posture slumping slightly where he stood, leaning against a tree.

“Highgarden is over the next rise,” Loras pointed out hesitantly.

“And I want naught to do with _moving_.”

Loras had not known when to hold his tongue when he was a boy at Highgarden, and he had not learned since leaving to squire for the young lord. “It is not so much warmer here than at Storm’s End,” he argued, and Renly cast him a doleful look. “Has my lord of Baratheon never been to the Reach before?”

 “Renly, please.” Loras pressed his lips together. “ _Lord_ Renly, if you must. My brother is…indeed, both of my brothers are the ones who give a damn about titles. I give a damn about results. And the certainty of cooking in my clothing if we do not stop here for a few moments,” he added cattily.

 The squire made a valiant effort not to roll his eyes, failed, and heard a mocking noise in response from the lord still slumped against his tree, sipping at water Loras had produced from a saddlebag. “In answer to your question, no. I never went to Highgarden. All the—arrangements—were made by Robert, like as not in King’s Landing, and like as not by one of his advisors in his stead. I merely do as my king commands.” 

 For all of Renly’s seeming flippancy, Loras had learned quite fast that Renly Baratheon was a dutiful lord, a quick wit, and would, in his time, become a masterful diplomat. It seemed evident, then, that Lord Renly had been the shrewd mind between the alliance with Highgarden, and behind Loras’s excellent treatment at Storm’s End.

If it was not so, a new light was cast on their interactions—what there had been of interactions between the squire and his lord. Loras mostly trained with the masters-at-arms and learned the mysteries of triangles and squares from the maester, of late. Be that as it may, Lord Renly had never treated him as anything other than a favored steward. 

Loras tried for an understanding smile as he approached his lord, unfastening Lord Renly’s cloak. “Mayhap my lord would be cooler if he removed the blanket around his neck.” Renly shrugged out of the heavy cloth obligingly, letting Loras fold it and stuff it into a saddlebag. With one last lusty drink of water, Renly declared that Loras was correct, and suggested they move on to Highgarden.

“Yes, my lord.” Loras succeeded in his effort at not rolling his eyes this time, but did not quite manage to keep it from his voice.

******

“A raven from Highgarden,” the maester said by way of explanation as he handed the scroll to Renly, who broke the seal, scanning the contents of the letter quickly, then reading it again more slowly.

_Dearest brother_ , it began, _I would that this reaches you on your name day, but the seventh is so much closer than I anticipated. I wish you a joyful name day, and Father wishes me to tell you he does, as well, and that he has a gift for you at Highgarden, which you shall receive upon your next visit. I hope this message finds you in good health and good cheer, and that I may see you soon. I miss you, Loras, and Father misses you and our brothers miss you, though they say it seldom enough. Happy name day, brother dear. All my love, Margaery Tyrell._

Renly let the parchment spring back into a roll, tossing it onto his desk. “Thank you, maester. I shall see that this makes its way into Loras’s hands myself.” The maester bowed out of the room, and Renly set off in search of his young squire.

He found Loras on the way to the maester’s chambers, presumably coming in from practicing with sword or lance for his lessons. “Loras!” he called, and the boy’s attention landed on him. Renly proffered the scroll, explaining as Loras reached for it, “A raven came for you, from your sister.” 

“Thank you, my lord,” Loras said politely, not opening it. “Like enough she writes for my name day.” 

“Is it your first away from home?” Renly inquired, and Loras nodded. “Blessed name day, Loras,” he said happily. “I knew not, or I would have gotten you a gift. Would you like me to cancel your lessons with the maester today? I know how fond you are of the triangles.”

Loras smiled at him, looking younger than his years—only a handful younger than Renly himself. “Thank you, my lord!” 

“Think nothing of it.” Renly made to go intercept the maester, but Loras called him back. 

“My lord?” When Renly turned to him, he continued. “I would enjoy if you would ride with me. It _is_ my name day.”

The lord of Storm’s End found it hard to deny his squire much anything, let alone a simple request. “Of course,” he submitted, “once I’ve told the maester.” 

Loras looked positively gleeful as he turned and ran down the corridor, yelling over his shoulder, “I’ll be at the stables! Don’t be slow or I’ll leave without you!” and then, as an afterthought, “My lord!”

In future endeavors to pinpoint the exact moment he and Loras had begun to fall in love, Renly would say it was then. Loras would put it much later, but Loras was notoriously contrary, which Renly had good cause to know. Good-natured bickering would ensue, and would be interrupted by Margaery’s entrance into the room, in reality a tent, to explain that _she_ knew when they began to fall, and suggest they clothe themselves before she did something untoward to one or both of them.

****

When Loras was thirteen years old—not yet a “ser,” but a squire at Storm’s End under its lord—he was caught behind the stables, chatting up a servant girl with talk of chivalry and how things would be when he became a knight. The masters of horse and arms gave no second thought to the boy; thirteen was an age as good as any to know one’s first woman, and so they left him be with nothing but sighs.

Loras’s true trouble began when Lord Renly came looking for him; when the young lord strode up, he was spouting something about the maester and Loras’s lessons for the day, asking where he was (which Lord Renly obviously knew), what he thought he was doing (the servant girl, honestly), and why he was late for his lessons (he was never late before, so he figured he had an excuse). 

Insolent as he was, and headstrong as Renly was, it took the lord standing there as menacingly as possible at such a young age and tapping his foot impatiently to break Loras from his lovely paramour; at length, he pulled his face out of her generous teats and gave her one last kiss, sending her off with a light smack on the rear. She went, pulling up her bodice. Renly stayed. 

“Off to your lessons,” he proclaimed, obviously with more authority than he actually felt he held. 

Loras finished doing up his laces and gave a mock-bow to the lord of Storm’s End. “My lord,” he responded, turning on his heel to head to the castle. 

He should have known; with Renly, it was never so easy. “Loras,” he called after the squire, continuing only after Loras had obligingly halted and turned to face him. “What is her name?”

“Roslyn, Robin—something with an ‘R,’” he finally answered, and Renly swayed to the side a bit, planting a fist on his hip. 

The lord was looking at the ground when he began to speak, but it mattered not. He spoke loudly enough. “Loras,” he stated, “you’re not old enough to know a woman ’til you’re old enough to remember her blessed name.” When Loras turned again, walking once more for Storm’s End, Renly yelled after him, “It’s _Rhaelyn_ , by the way!”

Months later, after Loras had fought in his first tourney, he sought out Renly in his solar once they returned to Storm’s End. When he demanded to know what _this_ was, the building tension between them, Renly closed the distance between them in the bedchamber and pressed his lips to Loras’s, and Loras kissed back and kissed and kissed, breaking contact only when his back hit the wall of the chamber with enough power to knock his breath from him.

Renly was nothing like that servant girl Loras had almost known. The young lord was hard and lean and _strong_ as all the Baratheons, a crop of coarse black hair on his chest and around his sex, and he kissed Loras with the same charismatic force as he did everything, his lips against Loras’s lips, his jaw, his neck, and lower, lower…

“You will not forget my name,” Renly vowed right before he took Loras’s cock into his mouth. “In fact, you’ll be saying it rather a lot soon enough.”

****

Back at Storm’s End, Renly’s household had been well-practiced at treating their lord’s eccentricities as the norm. The young lord carried out his duties diligently—in truth, he excelled at his tasks—and, as an odd sort of reward, his servants and guards and masters of what-have-you turned blind eyes, deaf ears, and mute tongues on…whatever their lord may have been doing during his leisure. Or _whom_ Renly had been doing during his leisure.

This excellent exchange of services meant that Loras—the lord’s pretty little squire—jolted awake before he did, and when Renly rolled over, tossing a heavy arm about Loras’s waist, Loras pushed it off, exclaiming, “My lord! It must be almost mid-day!”

“Mmmmmayhap,” was the half-answer, mumbled out as Renly groped about the bed for his lover, only to find that Loras had slid out of bed and was now hurriedly making himself ready for the day, considerably more quickly than he did in the usual morn. 

Never one to be cowed by the absence of his squire-turned-lover in his bed, Renly promptly fell back into slumber, only to be _rudely_ awakened once more by what seemed to be a pair of smallclothes that had taken flight right into his face. The smallclothes were rapidly followed by winged trousers, shirt, and all manner of airborne clothing.

Loras was pulling on his boots, worn from training, with one hand, hopping about on one foot, and lacing the neck of his shirt with the other. Renly sat up, finally, stretching his arms out to the sides, up above his head, yawning. “Aye, mid-day,” he confirmed with a glance out the window. “Pity, I shan’t be able to hear every complaint about stolen cows and vegetable monopolies.

The gesture his squire managed to make with his shirt-hand could only be called “obscene,” but Loras succeeded in clothing himself right as Renly began to form a reply. “Get out of bed, _my lord_ ,” he mocked, searching through the previous even’s discarded garments for his cloak. Giving up the search quickly with a small noise of defeat, he crossed the chamber quickly to press a kiss to his lord’s lips, ended as quickly as it had begun. 

When it became apparent that Renly had no immediate intention of removing himself from his bed, Loras leaned in and kissed him again, deeper, moving backwards until his lord had to stand in order to maintain the heated contact, the blankets falling away from his naked form.

As Loras broke the kiss, dashing from the chambers with a call of, “The maester may actually poison me this time!”, Renly sighed. 

“A dirty tactic, indeed,” he groused, picking up the clothing, which was not, in fact, winged. Just as Loras was not, in fact, late. 

*****

Loras grimaced down at the bruise on his side. The young lord at his bedside grimaced as well. “Gruesome,” Renly commented.

“Only a bump. The rib is unbroken.” He poked gingerly at the mottled flesh, red and yellow and green and purple. When a bruise was that color red, it went deep, and his curious finger prompted a hiss of pain and pique from the bedridden squire. 

Renly rearranged himself in his chair. “The master-at-arms apprised me of what happened.” He uncrossed his legs, leaning toward his squire. “Loras…you must be more careful.”

His words were met with a snort of injured pride. “I was _unhorsed_ , and this is merely a scrape. If I’m to be a knight—“

Loras cut himself off as Renly’s hand moved to cradle his face carefully, eyes searching for Loras’s gaze and meeting it. Holding it as a heavy silence took over the room. Profound concern and devotion found their way onto the lord’s face. Loras lifted the hand of his uninjured side to press it over Renly’s, never breaking their gaze. He stroked his fingers softly over the lord’s. “I cannot promise you caution. I can promise to get—better. One day, I may even unhorse the Kingslayer,” Loras attempted to jape.  

The lord just smiled a sad smile, his eyes belying the expression. “I would be very distressed, were you to—“

The squire scoffed, then winced in pain. “Oh, don’t be melodramatic.” He slotted his fingers in between Renly’s on his cheek. “I’ve a thousand reasons to live. Knighthood, for a start.”

Renly’s eyes broke the contact between them as he said quietly, “I believe I may love you, Loras.”

Another pause, less weighted than the last. “How?” Loras demanded, a note of challenge behind the word.

“Not…not as a brother, or a son, or a squire.” Renly sighed. “As what we are, I suppose.” 

Of everything in the world, he did not expect the elated smile that broke over his lover’s face, nor the way he turned his face delicately to press a kiss to Renly’s palm. When Loras next spoke, it was half into Renly’s skin, the squire’s breath warm against his flesh. 

“There, then. A fresh reason. If I were a knight, I’d fain wear your token into a joust.” The lord looked almost risibly relieved, and Loras laughed once and promptly winced again. “My lady,” he mocked. Renly gave his squire and lover a dark look. Loras kissed his palm once more and whispered, “I may love you, as well.” 

The lord rose from his chair, rounding the bed and fitting himself against Loras’s good side with utmost caution. The squire put his arm around Renly’s shoulders, turning his head to meet the lord’s lips in a slow kiss. “You’re wearing far too many clothes,” Loras muttered when they parted, and Renly breathed out a laugh.

“You only just promised to—“

“I said no such thing,” Loras interrupted. 

“There is no, er, permutation that would not—“ 

Loras quieted the lord with another kiss, just as chaste as the last. “At least the coat and boots.”

Renly stood as mindfully as he had lay down, removing the requested articles of clothing. “You know,” he grumbled as he slid back into the bed, “some say the beauty most desired is the—“ Loras kissed him. “—beauty concealed,” the lord finished, aligning their bodies once again. 

The injured party lifted an eyebrow skeptically. “I most desire you…hm, naked, but for perhaps your boots, the soft leather ones. Hard and wanting, and inside me…beneath me…you are so strong, Renly, ’tis like fucking a—“

What it was like fucking, Renly never discovered, as he pressed his lips to Loras’s again, the squire’s hand slipping down to unlace his lover’s breeches.

****

Loras raised one eyebrow as Renly leaned in again; he knew what was coming. It would be the same remark—

“This is _truly_ terrible, Loras.”

—as had been whispered to him in whining tones for the last hour, and, as Loras had been responding for the past hour, so he did again.

“Don’t…let her…get…to you,” he grated out patiently, really, with the patience of the Mother herself. 

Ignorant of the spat going on merely fifteen feet away, the mummers carried on their farce, an overwrought, dramatic tale of clandestine love. Lady Olenna Tyrell had invited a particularly terrible troupe to perform during the feast in honor of the visit of the lord of Storm’s End and his squire, her own grandson; Loras, who knew the cunning old woman all too well, mistrusted her sudden fascination with Renly. It was likely she’d heard some rumor or other concerning the pair, and, knowing that such rumors would be roundly denied if addressed directly, had taken her own tack in dealing with them.

“ _…and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun!_ ” nattered the smitten paramour of the farce, clasping “her” hands upon her breast. “ _O! I have bought the mansion of a love, but not possess’d it, and though I am sold, not yet enjoy’d! So tedious is this day…_ ”

Renly’s voice in his ear again, “Hear, hear.” Loras jabbed him sharply with an elbow.

“ _…as is the night before some festival to an impatient child…_ ”

The squire leaned into his lord, muttering, “ _You_ are an impatient child,” which garnered naught but a chuckle of resignation.

“… _speaks heavenly eloquence!_ ”

“Heavenly eloquence,” what a perfect description of the stream of obscenities Loras was now promising to his lord and lover if he’d only just _behave_ himself in the presence of the Queen of Thorns, really, _Lord Baratheon_ , you’re the very model of propriety _everywhere_ else, are you incapable of showing the proper decorum in the presence of mine own kin…

The lord of Storm’s End now found himself caught between an unpleasant place and a surpassing unpleasant place, torn between nodding and ‘hmm’ing in intervals at his squire’s thorough invective and paying attention to the farce—it appeared to be a tragedy—in front of him. 

In the end, both Renly and his squire made it through the final acts of the farce unscathed, though it was rather a close thing for Renly. He really did allow Loras to get away with too much, he reflected much later, when Loras had helped strip his clothes from him and dutifully attended him in his bath. 

“So dutiful,” he breathed, to a puzzled look from his squire, as Loras slid into the bath next to him.

*****

“… _And Visenya Targaryen rode atop—_ “ Renly looked down at the knight-to-be in his lap. “Loras?”

The fine Tyrell features stirred in half-sleep. “Did not,” he murmured thickly, burrowing down further into the space he’d made between Renly’s legs. “’S just you.”

Shaking his head, Renly returned to the book, an history of Targaryen conquests which Loras had found in his old bedchamber. No more than a page later, the lord determined that his lover was, most like, fast asleep, head pillowed against Renly’s thigh. 

Renly had never been particularly bookish, and he saw no need to finish his recital of the Targaryen rulers and their feats. He closed the book and cast a gaze around Loras’s quarters at Highgarden. The squire’s family had kept it much as it had been before their youngest son had left for Storm’s End, down to the toy dragons and swords Loras had played with as a child. 

“You are utterly wasted on me,” he whispered down at the head of curls. If his masters of horse and arms had not been so excellent, Loras would never have become the young man he was, skilled beyond his years in lance and sword and riding. The lord of Storm’s End was no slouch, but it was well-known that his true talents lay elsewhere.

Loras shifted again, running a hand along Renly’s thigh sleepily. “Used to think so.” Not fast asleep, then. Renly ran his fingers through the soft brown hair, and the squire pushed into the touch with a happy, drowsy noise. 

Renly kept his hand moving gently. “No more?” he inquired, and Loras sighed languidly, shaking his head minutely.

“Turned out well,” the squire managed before he fell asleep once more, but it was enough to bring a tiny smile to the lord’s face. 

*****

Renly pulled the page’s hat onto his head with a look of purest loathing at Loras. “Those mummers were terrible,” he groused, “and I shall never understand you, Loras Tyrell.”

The young man in question looked positively gleeful as he laced up his bodice. “It’s something…”

“Something,” scoffed the lord of Storm’s End.

“…something novel,” Loras finished, ignoring his lover’s outburst, finishing up the laces and slipping on his gown. “I fear your masquerades have grown dull, my lord.”

“Not _this_ dull,” Renly protested, but halfheartedly; after all, of the two of them, he was not the one wearing a gown. It was _his_ fault, in retrospect; he had been in the mood for a masquerade, and had charged Loras with the task of making this one, on the evening of the Day of All Saints, particularly memorable. So, in less-than-happy hindsight, if his squire had deigned a costume ball particularly memorable, the blame laid upon the man who had charged the ( _addlepated_ ) squire with the task at the head of it.

Said squire was donning his mask as Renly watched, with a chastising, “Don’t worry, my lord. I shan’t so much as approach you.”

That was somehow more frightening than the alternative. “And have crazed women falling over me crying about their doomed Braavosi lover? You’ll attend me at this ball—which, I might remind you, was _your_ idea—as you do at every other.”

Loras, now gowned and masked, sidled up to his lord, pulling him down for a kiss by the brooch pinning his magenta cloak. “Renly… Renly… Wherefore art thou Renly?” he asked mockingly, repeating lines of the farce to which he and Renly had been subjected a scarce month ago. “Deny thy father…and refuse thy name…”

“I _refuse_ to be party to this madness,” Renly countered, lifting Loras, hauling up his skirts so that his lover might wrap his bare legs around Renly’s waist, Loras’s gown pooling around his hips. The lord had achieved his goal of making Loras stop his maddening recitation, but his victory was rather forgotten as he slid his hands up hard thighs, supporting his lover as he bore him backward to the bed, dumping Loras there without ceremony, his skirts rucked up beneath him. 

When he stood again, Loras made a little protesting noise, to which Renly replied, “I’ve gotten dressed in your mummer’s costume, I’ve watched my squire disguise himself in a woman’s gown. I’ve done my good for the nonce.” He forced his eyes away as Loras lay spread out like a common whore (what Renly knew of whores—admittedly, little and less) and stroked himself through his woman’s smallclothes, sighing Renly’s name breathily. 

A smug smile overtook Renly’s face as he waited patiently, face angled away from his lover. It was not long at all before Loras made a frustrated noise and grumbled, “Not working?”

“Not working,” Renly confirmed with a cautious glance down, where Loras was now standing, rearranging his skirts and patting himself back into place with hands that had, like as not, helped dress his sister as a child. “Shall we?” he asked when Loras was done, offering his arm. 

As Loras took it, he said quietly, “But we—“

Renly led his squire out of his chambers with all the aplomb of a lord escorting a highborn lady. “The masquerade starts only when we enter that hall,” he quipped, as they descended the stairs, “and ends when we leave.”

The charged air between them belied the talk of masquerade balls; both lovers knew that Renly was no longer speaking of parties or the Day of All Saints. Beginning at the door of the great hall, the true fabrication began; no one could know of _them_. Let the guests suspect, let them talk. The lord of Storm’s End loved being talked about. Let them _know_ nothing, though.

*********

“I am a knight. They call me ‘Garlan the Gallant,’” Garlan groused, and Renly cast him a commiserating look. 

“I am lord of Storm’s End.” The lord’s voice was slightly more forced than Garlan’s, owing to his heavier burden. Loras, atop him, place a well-aimed smack on his backside and commanded him to go forward, lowering his lance—a long cylindrical pillow Margaery had conjured from some depth of Hell—and raising his shield, a wooden practice shield like as not lifted from the armory.

Margaery, atop her second-eldest brother, did the same, tilting at Loras with a cry of delight. Garlan, like his fellow horse, looked miserable, crawling along the floor of the great hall with exasperated grumbling noises. “Garlan, you make a truly detestable horse,” the young woman complained, tugging at her brother’s hair in hopes of speeding him up. 

“At least you don’t have to ride the _Lord of Storm’s End_.” Loras said his title in a voice dripping with disdain, and Renly would have put coin on the squire shaking his head sadly. 

“Garlan’s arse is just bony enough to be uncomfortable,” Margaery whined, and her steed made a loud noise of protest at his treatment. “Lord Renly’s got a nice arse!”

Renly puffed up at the compliment, but forgot to continue his forward motion, which prompted another smack. “I have no spurs,” Loras said by way of apology. 

“You enjoy hurting me,” Renly grumbled, with another sympathetic glance at Garlan. 

“I’m _hardly_ hurting you,” Loras protested, patting his lover’s rump gently in contrition.

The jousters’ lances hit, glanced, and then they were past one another, rounding the “lists” atop their steeds, the elder of which carped, “Are you not both far too old for this sort of nonsense?”

Margaery patted her brother’s shoulder patronizingly. “I could ask you the same, brother. I’ll never be allowed to joust. So I’ll unhorse the callow youth who will one day manage to unseat the Kingslayer and call my jousting career a success. Now, forward!”

The next time he and Garlan crawled past one another, Loras astride him and tilting at his sister, Renly pitched himself to the side, dumping Loras on the floor unceremoniously with a yell of, “Mutiny!” Loras stared up at him first in shock, and then with a look of utmost malice as he jumped up and commenced chasing Renly through the room, intent on murder.

Margaery dismounted from her brother’s back, straightened her skirts, and declared, dignity perfectly intact, “Looks like I’ve won, brother. Garlan, you’ve been a most noble steed.”

*****

The festivities celebrating Loras’s anointment as knight had been Garlan’s idea. Highgarden, he had said, was in sore need of some well-mannered frivolity, and Lord Renly had seconded the notion as soon as he got wind. The lord of Storm’s End had always been fond of their Loras.

Margaery would have sworn in the sight of the Seven that she danced with every man in the hall, every one of them a potential suitor, every one of them too lowborn. Her father would never agree, and, if perchance he did, Margaery had her schemes for getting out of a deal.

It was a slightly-winded Margaery Tyrell who made her way out of the grand hall, into the atrium that stood before it, seeking solitude and whatever fresh air she could find. Instead, she heard peals of laughter and an indignant raised voice.

“I’m not the girl, _you_ be the girl!” The laughter grew in volume. “Stop _laughing_ , you cunt!”

She recognized the voice before she set her eyes on its owner, halfway down the floor of the spacious atrium, held in Lord Renly’s arms. Even as she watched on, her brother leaned in, fisting one hand in Renly’s Baratheon-black curls and tugging, to a wince from the lord; she did not expect the fierce kiss that followed, nor the blush that rose in Loras’s cheeks as Renly broke away, leading her brother in the same slow dance that was enjoyed by the other revelers in the grand hall. 

Gears turned in Margaery’s head as she contemplated the scene, a distant voyeur. 

Her brother, the knight, let himself be led, uncommonly quiet. “You learned well,” Renly’s soft voice floated to her, bouncing off the high ceiling. Mid-dance, the pair switched roles, Loras now the lead, but no less capable for it. 

When the song came to an eventual end, Margaery saw fit to make her presence known. “Brother!” she called, and the pair sprang apart as she approached. 

“M-Margaery!” She paid no heed to the stammer in her brother’s voice as she kissed first him, and then Lord Renly, stretching onto her toes for the latter. “What are you—?”

She smiled her winningest smile. “So many men in one place, all hoping for the same honor… It does wear. I’m afraid there is no blood being shed, either, so I am, of course, weary.” Lord Renly grew a bit pale at the mention of blood. 

Loras saw right through her cheer, irritating elder brother that he was. “Don’t tell father,” he warned her. She turned her winsome smile on the knight. 

“I had not thought of it, dear brother.” She kept her tone carefully light. “I want nothing more than your happiness. And my lord’s,” she amended, dropping a short curtsey to Renly. It went unsaid that their happiness was their damnation in the eyes of the realm, and Margaery’s closed mouth meant that rumor remained simply rumor.

Loras’s eyes, so similar to her own, narrowed. “In return for what?”

She returned the expression. “A favor.”

Renly granted it to her promptly, more fool he, and she inclined her head. “My lord is kind. I expect we shall see much more…” She drew her eyes down his form, strong-framed like all the Baratheons. “…of one another.” 

He had a brother, this one, Margaery pondered as she made her way back into the grand hall. A brother with _power._ Now Lord Renly owed her a favor, and she intended to use it wisely.

*****

Leaves gave way, soft and springy, beneath their feet as Renly led Loras through the godswood. When the lord of Storm’s End had grabbed his hand in the yard and urged him to follow, Loras—Ser Loras—had done so without question. Now, they were deep in the forest surrounding Storm’s End and moving deeper, and still Loras had not asked where they were going. He placed a great deal of trust in Renly Baratheon.

“Almost there,” Renly answered the unasked question. 

True to his word, not another five minutes passed before Renly pushed aside a low-hanging branch to reveal a small natural clearing, a high-set brook running into a clear pool at the far side. As Loras took in the sight of autumn, so well-preserved here, letting the sound of the soft-running water set the scene, Renly tossed something at him. Loras caught it on reflex. A peach.

“I thought we might eat,” he said by way of explanation, unceremoniously sitting himself on the ground near the pool, rich clothing and all. He made a pretty sight against the colorful fallen leaves, so pretty that Loras had no choice but to go to him, sitting near enough to the water that Loras could doff his boots and roll up his worn breeches to submerge his feet. The water was bracing cold, but so clear he could see straight through to the bottom. 

Renly slid himself closer over the leaves as Loras took a bite of his peach. “These are from Highgarden,” Loras exclaimed with doting exasperation. “You’re feeding me from my own pantry!” He softened the blow with a peach-flavored kiss on his lover’s lips. True to form, Renly brought his free hand up to cup the back of Loras’s head, sliding through his hair, down his jaw, a small, happy sound making its way from Loras’s throat. 

When they broke apart, Renly smiled his wicked smile and chastened Loras, “Eat your damned peach.”

“Watch your damned tongue,” Loras returned, pulling his lover back to him with significantly more intent. The peaches rolled, forgotten, across the ground. There were many more peaches where they came from. Highgarden’s bounty was near endless.

Loras was fairly certain it was somehow sacrilege—or elsewise, sacred—to the old gods, what he and Renly did in the little clearing in the godswood. He did not know enough of the old gods to distinguish the difference. Afterward, he lay next to Renly on the lord’s own deep-green cloak, catching his breath against his lover’s side. 

It was Renly who spoke, shattering the perfect calm. “Bury me here,” he said quietly, staring at the canopy of trees. When Loras propped himself up on an elbow, looking down at the lord, he continued. “If something should ever happen. I would like to know I was put to rest in death where I was happiest in life.”

_What a morbid tangent_ , Loras thought, but aloud, he replied, “Happiest?”

“Here,” Renly repeated, catching Loras in his arms and rolling them so that he was above the knight, resting between Loras’s legs. “With you. At summer’s end.”

After that, they did not speak.

******

“It…appears to be…” Loras tilted the garment this way and that, Renly’s chin on his shoulder as the lord stood behind him. “…a…”

Renly made a delighted sound; Loras hissed and flinched as his ear rang. “It is a lion!” he exclaimed, and pulled it on over his nakedness, the hood with its floppy ears and mane finding its place atop his head. “I had not ever worn it before, but now I fear I shall be mistaken for a Lannister everywhere I go. For I am never taking it off,” he clarified, throwing himself onto his bed, the knee-length gown flying up and giving Loras a good eyeful of his lover’s lower half.

“Never?” he entreated, jumping onto the bed next to Renly, still unclothed. “I shall become bored with only seeing your calves.”

The lord laughed as Loras flung a leg over him, settling on his hips heavily. “Why, Ser Loras,” he japed, “am I to believe my calves are not _erotic_ enough for you?”

Loras made a little affirming noise, smiling a tiny smile as he rolled his hips once, hard, and commenced sliding down his lover’s silk-clad body until they were chest-to-chest, and then crawling backward until he came upon Renly’s unclothed lower legs. He ran one thumbnail lightly up the arch of Renly’s foot, then all of his nails over the lord’s calves, the backs of his knees, under the gown and over his thighs, until he grasped sharp hips covered in gold silk. Renly’s breath caught and Loras laughed, shoving the silk up. “Wouldn’t want to ruin it,” he teased, before sliding back up to press a kiss to his lover’s lips. “Never?” he asked again, and Renly looked to be revising his opinion, before he answered.

“Never,” he confirmed, and Loras, defeated for the moment, fell to the bed, groaning his frustration into the mattress, batting Renly’s hand away as it went for his bare back. 

“Never,” Loras declared, raising his head briefly, and Renly laughed again and declared that he was content to go without—if Loras was that put off by his garb, Loras could well enough finish himself off for the rest of his days. Loras bickered back in good humor that Renly could well enough go find himself a nice wife who minded not about his strange taste in clothing. 

Their little spat ended when Loras coughed out a few syllables that sounded suspiciously like, “Cersei Lannister,” and, Renly, disgusted with the thought, pulled off the lion-gown, tossing it to a forgotten corner of his chambers and pulling Loras to him with a muttered, “You win.”

*****

“This one?” Loras lifted the hairpin, a lily wrought in silver and inlaid with pearl. Renly shrugged. The Knight of Flowers rolled his eyes. “This one,” he told the merchant, forking over the coin to pay for it. Renly had brought him to market along his side in order to pick out a gift for the princess Myrcella’s name day; his longtime lover had given the excuse that he “knew not what pleases ladies, young or otherwise,” but Loras suspected that being on the king’s small council, surrounded at all times by Varys’s whisperers, was wearing on him. 

They made their slow way through the bazaar, Renly picking up this or that fruit or jam or cask of wine, placing them in the small wayn driven by a steward from the Red Keep. Abruptly, halfway down the market street, Renly turned to the steward, dismissing him. “Take these back to my apartments,” he ordered, and the young lad wasted no time in turning the wagon about, vanishing down the crowded way. When he was out of sight, the lord of Storm’s End turned back to the knight at his side, resuming their trek. “I haven’t gotten a moment of peace since I stepped foot into King’s Landing,” he murmured, pitched only for Loras to hear. 

“Come to my room, then,” the knight responded, in the same low voice. “Surely Varys hasn’t—“

Renly’s whisper interrupted him. “Varys has most certainly posted his _little birds_ ,” he scoffed, “around your quarters. It isn’t safe here, my love.” His voice dropped even lower in volume on the last phrase. The marketplace ended as abruptly as it began at the end of the street, leading onto a row of pleasure houses—owned, if Renly had heard aright, by Lord Baelish himself. The lord of Storm’s End had not had occasion to know for certain. 

Loras’s eyes, the color of late-summer leaves in the sunlight, gleamed with the cleverness of a new-hatched plan. “For old times’ sake, my lord,” he said to Renly, ostensibly just loud enough to be heard over the hum of a crowded marketplace, but in reality loud enough to be heard by paid men, Varys’s and Baelish’s alike, “let me escort you back to your quarters. We should sup together.”

“Of course, Ser Loras,” Renly replied in a like tone, catching on quickly. The lord had not elected to stay in the Red Keep, but elsewhere, in a small subordinate holding of the king, where there were no ridiculous passages in the walls or nooks for whisperers to hide in. Covered windows and barred doors made for some measure of secrecy from the informers that were everywhere at King’s Landing; if they were careful, he and his knight could dine together, and Renly could finally _hold_ and _touch_ and _kiss_ the one person he’d been counting the days to see again.

_Gods be good_ , Renly thought acidly. The sooner he could return to Storm’s End, the better. 

*****

The little prince Tommen had looked so happy to crown his uncle with cat’s ears that Renly had yet to take them off, a fact of which he was sorely reminded when Loras saw him next, in Renly’s chambers after the feast for Myrcella’s name day. The acclaimed knight burst into giggles like a boy half his age, tweaking the bright-orange ears with a delicate hand.

“You laugh,” Renly contended, “but he gave me a pair for ‘good Sew Lowas’ as well.” 

Loras was far too easily caught by Renly for a knight of his caliber—he would have to address that issue, surely, if a half-drunk Baratheon could so quickly capture the renowned Ser Loras Tyrell, kissing him gently as he smiled wickedly and and slid the ears on over light brown curls. “Fetching,” he declared quietly, pressing Loras closer to him affectionately.

“Quite,” Loras grumbled, loosening up quickly, nearly as far into his cups as his lover. Renly looked so pleased with himself that the knight let go, loosing a quiet chuckle. “Is there aught else my lord requires for his amusement?” he murmured, burying his hands in thick black Baratheon curls, fingers catching on the band which held the ears in place. 

Renly smiled a slow, intoxicating smile, and Loras could do nothing but lean in and lick it, tongue sliding over his lover’s lips—he tasted of wine, the deep red rather than the Arbor gold Loras had drunk—in a caress they had already had ample time to perfect.

When Loras pulled away from the slow, sultry kiss, meaning to slide Renly’s tunic up and off, he caught a glimpse of the orange cat ears still perched on his lover’s head, now slightly askew, and burst into more hissing, drunken laughter, wrestling the thrice-damned tunic off with significantly more trouble than it was worth. He pressed his forehead to Renly’s bare shoulder and let his laughter overtake him. 

Reluctantly, he heard Renly join in his mirth, kissing the top of Loras’s head and huffing out chuckles into his hair, which quickly turned to gasps as Loras remembered his previous mission, falling to his knees and running the heel of his hand over the front of his lover’s breeches, unlacing him and leaning in to wrap his arms around Renly’s waist, the lord stumbling close enough for Loras to nuzzle his cock, which hardened at his touch even after the wine.

When he took Renly into his mouth, he was giggling at the picture he must have made, Renly’s pet cat, sitting at his feet and lapping at his cock. Ser Loras kept the ears on. Renly minded not at all.

*****

As Renly spread the light, shapeless cloth over the bed, he sighed. “Best not to let Robert know we were given these. Elsewise he should probably command all his favorites to wear them to court.”

“His favorite women, you mean,” Loras corrected.

The lord shook his head as he stripped off his court clothing. “A pity for him that he finds court _boring_. Ser Loras,” he interrupted himself, “do assist me with this, I’ve quite forgotten how the Ghiscari do it.”

Loras grumbled mutinously as he wound the gold _tokar_ about his lover. “I came to King’s Landing for a tourney, and I find a _tokar_.”

Renly stood straight, his arms held awkwardly out to the side, as the knight wound the _tokar_ about him. “ _Two_ _tokars_ ,” he corrected, pulling a face. “Courtesy of our good friends to the east.” Loras finished the job quickly, wrapping the silk over his shoulder and stuffing the end into his lover’s left hand unceremoniously. 

Unaccustomed as he was to the Ghiscari garb, Renly hopped shamelessly over to the chest where the second _tokar_ , in crimson—meant for the queen as his own was for the king—lay, a bundle of fringe and silk, eyeing first the _tokar_ , then the Knight of Flowers.

“No,” Ser Loras precluded his lover’s scheme before it had completely formed. The lord’s eyes made their twofold path again, and Loras protested again, more weakly. “Crimson is a terrible color on any Tyrell.” When Renly hopped back over to him, clutching the free end of the _tokar_ , and used his other hand to tug at Loras’s clothes, the knight gave in with poor grace. “I thought you recalled nothing of _tokars_.”

“I am a quick study,” Renly replied happily, meeting obvious difficulty in divesting Loras of his clothing one-handed. 

The knight made very few moves to help Renly in his task. “By which you mean I shall help you or I shall face the trial of a loose _tokar_.” The Ghiscari garment was notorious for coming unwound if not wrapped tightly enough, trailing behind its wearer so that he may step on it and humiliate himself. 

His lover’s answering smile confirmed Loras’s suspicion. The knight rolled his eyes and muttered a curse, but stripped what remained of his clothes. When Renly began his hop back over again to the chest, Loras stopped him mid-journey with a sigh of, “Renly, you’ll brain yourself trying to move about.” The _tokar_ required grace and caution in any movement; its wearers generally travelled everywhere by palanquin or litter, and so did not _need_ to walk. 

Loras fully intended on a reward for so indulging his lover, a sentiment which only grew in his mind as he unravelled the crimson _tokar_ meant for the queen, ignoring Renly’s eyes on his naked form. Wrapping the cloth for the first time about his waist, he made his way back over to the be- _tokar_ ed lord, thrusting the bundle of loose fabric out at Renly. 

“Here,” he groaned as Renly took it from him with unholy glee. 

As Renly began reckoning one-handed with the Ghiscari sheet-garment, Loras helping him more than the knight would ever admit to doing, he asked, “As my…knight—“ This was obviously not Renly’s word of first choice. “—should not anything that makes me happy make you so, as well?”

He would never admit to this, either, but Renly’s job of wrapping the _tokar_ was done more quickly and more efficiently than his own, and correctly, which was a feat in itself. As he took the loose end from Renly, clutching it in his left hand, he replied, “If I indulged all your whims, I should be quite a poor knight. I’d be your bedmaid like as not, and attend you in court wearing naught but a whore’s silk. _No_ ,” he repeated as Renly’s eyes grew distant.

“But—“

“ _No_ ,” he murmured against Renly’s lips, his hard tone belied by the smile he pressed into the kiss. 

Renly’s cry of exasperation as Loras tugged the loose end of the gold _tokar_ from him was almost worth the trouble of winding it onto him in the first place. “I wrapped my gift,” he whispered, a challenge behind the words. “And now I mean to have it.”

*****

No expense had been spared for the Hand’s tourney, and Eddard Stark could not have looked more sullen about that if he were _trying_ , Renly noticed, from a few seats down the high table, where the king and his Hand were seated along with the queen and the members of the king’s small council. As the next course was brought out—one of two desserts, he had heard—the Knight of Flowers, seated with the others who would enter the lists the next morning, caught his eye and raised one tawny eyebrow, flicking his eyes down to his food and then back up to Renly.

If that was they way they would play it, then, Renly was game for Ser Loras’s little challenge. A lewd smile overtook his face as the young knight picked up some of the chilled cream that topped his cobbler in a spoon, licking it off obscenely with a sidelong glance at the high table. Renly made a face and picked up his own spoon, meaning to one-up his former squire; he had only just dug into the sweet cream when Lord Baelish, to his right, leaned over, murmuring in his simpering voice, “Do you think that wise, my lord?” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Renly saw Loras’s back stiffen at the lower table, casting a dark glance up at the one they called Littlefinger, who continued on, “Though I am sure my lord means it only as a jape, these lowborn men do tend to…draw their own conclusions. I would not have my lord’s reputation besmirched.”

Two could play at the game of mocking flattery as well, and few were so practiced as Renly. “My lord’s consideration is flattering,” he replied to Littlefinger with a smile as bright as it was false, “but I know not what you mean.” Down at the knights’ table, Loras was at it again, working at his dessert with all the enthusiasm of a dockside whore; Lord Baelish’s shrewd, watery eyes snapped to the knight and back to Renly, narrowing. 

Those eyes belied the smile that overtook Littlefinger’s thin lips. “Of course,” he affirmed in honeyed tones. “My mistake.”

****

Loras let himself be pulled into the small council chamber with only a few quiet protests, mostly limited to, “Renly? _Renly!_ ” The Red Keep was asleep, the hour of the wolf far upon its inhabitants, and still Renly was awake, dragging his lover around the castle for reasons Loras wished were beyond him, but to which he could hazard an educated guess.

When the lord closed the chamber doors behind them with a wicked smile, Loras’s worst fears were confirmed, and he protested a bit more fervently, what if someone _saw_ , what if they were _caught_ , and Renly just pulled the knight to him, kissing him fiercely. “Would not—“ Loras tried when they broke for breath, “your chambers—be more appropriate?” 

In answer, the lord pulled out a chair—presumably his own—and pushed his lover into it demandingly, reaching down to unlace Loras’s clothes, vest, shirt, breeches, his lips falling upon Loras’s again and making him breath in deep gasps. “You must be quiet,” Renly said, a heated challenge behind the words as he knelt.

The task became much more difficult as the lord’s lips moved over Loras’s flesh, all teasing teeth and tongue, followed by roving hands and raking nails, leaving trails of possession all across the knight’s body. 

Loras put a hand over his mouth gently as Renly slid the knight’s breeches and smallclothes down his thighs, freeing his member. The lord put his mouth to good use, taking most of him into that delicious heat, and Loras’s hand tightened over his mouth, his breath coming in ragged pants through his nose.

His free hand tangled in jet-black curls, pushing Renly further onto him, the lord taking it with only a sultry chuckle that slithered up Loras’s spine, pushing his hips into Renly’s mouth. Loras dropped his hand from his own mouth, clutching the edge of the small council table and breathing hard, but making no noise otherwise.

Renly had no such compunctions, making first a steady stream of approving noises, and later a long, quiet moan against Loras’s member as the knight’s hips lost rhythm, his seed spilling into the lord’s mouth with a shudder from Loras. Renly swallowed with the ease of one of Littlefinger’s kept girls, lapping at Loras’s spent cock until the knight pulled him off with the hand in his hair, up for a kiss that tasted of Loras.

“You’re mad,” Loras panted against his lips, and Renly had the good grace to concede. 

It was a good thing, he considered as Loras switched their positions deftly, that he had found someone as mad as he.

*****

When Ser Loras arrived in the evening at Storm’s End, to present his father’s terms to his former lord, he was met at the gates by one of Renly’s household guard, who greeted him with the familiar courtesy of one who had once taught him how to hold a sword.

“My lord is in his solar, last I heard.” Loras thanked him, gave over what little he had brought to be put in guest chambers, and started his short journey to Renly’s quarters. His visit would come as no surprise; since Robert’s death, Renly had been scheming to become king, and he intended on using his ties to House Tyrell to their utmost.

Ser Loras was given nods and exclamations of recognition, and he counted it both fortunate and near to mad how much this dreary castle by Shipbreaker Bay had become home to him. When he knocked sharply on Renly’s closed door, a voice came from distant within. “One moment!” 

From the noise, it seemed a struggle took place behind the heavy wood, and then Renly opened the door, looking slightly flushed. “Loras!” he cried out, taking the knight’s face in both hands and drawing him in for a sudden kiss. 

Loras pulled back with a raised eyebrow—an expression he had perfected specifically for his lover. “My lord?” 

“Come, come! I have need of your skill.” Loras let himself be dragged into Renly’s chambers by one hand, still road-worn and grimy from riding all day. 

One look at the state of the lord’s quarters and Loras simply sighed, drawing Renly to him and pressing a kiss to his lover’s temple. “I love you.”

Renly appeared to have been in the process of constructing a fortress from the trappings of his bed. Luxurious blankets in forest green, Baratheon black, and gold joined furs and cushions on the floor in a heap. The lord of Storm’s End pulled Loras further in, shutting the door behind them and declaring, “I require structural support.”

Looking around the room, there was, indeed, little that could be used as such. “One moment,” he promised, slipping out of the chamber and down a short hallway to the room where Renly received most of his important visitors. He took two small chairs beneath one arm, a third beneath the other, and dragged them back to the solar.

“Ah!” As Renly arranged the chairs in a rough triangle, Loras pulled over the chair from Renly’s small desk, adding it to the shape. He picked up blankets and furs, draping them across the backs of the chairs with some eye for decoration, weighing down the ends with books. Renly sat on the floor and arrayed the cushions inside the spacious cavern, crawling inside with all the dignity of a small child. 

Once Loras had finished his task, Renly peered up at him. “Enough room for another.”

Loras laughed at the figure his former lord cut, stating, “I’d sooner bathe.” Renly looked scandalized. Mayhap he was not _so_ dirty, after all… Divesting himself of his cloak and boots, the renowned Knight of Flowers crawled into the cave. 

No sooner had he done so than Renly declared that wine would make this the best fortress this side of Winterfell, scrabbling to his feet and calling for a servant to bring a flagon of sweet red. When Renly returned, it was with two goblets, and he knelt, handing one in to Loras and setting the other on the floor as he wormed his way back in.

Absolutely nothing was said of Mace Tyrell between giddy kisses that night, and the morn found them still in their handmade cave, sleeping half on top of one another, an empty pitcher and two empty goblets strewn across the floor.

*****

Renly pressed his hand to Loras’s shoulder as they roamed the corridors. “You always make that face when you have something unfortunate to say.” The knight’s long silence only confirmed his suspicions. “Loras,” he entreated, moving his hand down to interlace their fingers. 

Ser Loras accepted the point of contact, giving his lover’s hand an anxious squeeze. “My father would have me present the terms of the proposed alliance.” The dark expression on the knight’s face blackened.The pace of their stroll through Storm’s End slowed as Loras laid out the terms of Lord Tyrell’s partnership with Renly, prompted by the lord’s silence. 

“…and, as you are a third son—and my father last rode with House Lannister—he intends one more addendum to his terms.” Ser Loras sighed, fingers tightening over Renly’s hand. “In order to further tie our houses together, he proposes that you marry my sister, Margaery.” Loras’s voice grew hollow as he neared the end of his statement, and he stopped walking completely.

Renly halted as well, dropping Loras’s hand gently. “I understand. Tell your father I will meet all of his terms, and I await his arrangements for the wedding with…unmatched eagerness.” He took a step back, making a short bow to his lover. “I trust you know your way out.” He turned to continue down the corridor.

“Renly,” Loras called after him, and the lord—king, if he had his way—paused. “Is there—aught else?”

The instant Renly faced his lover again, Loras saw a man defeated by his own duty. “Ser Loras,” Renly began patiently, “I cannot mean to marry your sister and carry on with—“

“We wanted to give her to Robert. _She_ wanted us to give her to Robert. And now she wants the newest claim to the throne.” Loras refused to acknowledge that his voice had taken on a pleading tone.

It fell on deaf ears. “Your lord father has named his terms. You would do well to—“

“ _Renly!_ ” Anger now bled into the plea, and Renly was no longer deaf.

“ _Loras!_ ” he mocked. “ _Someone_ with half a wit needs to sit on that damned chair at King’s Landing, and I’d much rather it not be _Stannis_ —and if I have to marry your sister, her handmaidens, and Lady Olenna all, _so be it_.”

His words sent a visible shock through his lover. “’Tis not the _marriage_ I take issue with—“

“‘ _With which I take issue’_ —“

“Do I seem concerned with _grammar_ , my _lord_? I have served you well—“

“Not so well at the moment—“

“ _Renly!_ ” Loras put a hand to his brow, smoothing it with firm fingertips. “I care not who— _whom_ you marry. Only that I—“ The knight sighed out a deep breath. “Kings are seldom faithful to their queens. Margaery _knows_ what we—have. Given a choice, she would choose queendom over a dutiful husband.”

Ser Loras was too far away to see the pain behind the hardened expression that had taken over his lover’s features; he could only tell that Renly looked more like a Baratheon than he ever had, stern and commanding. “You are right on all counts but one, Ser Loras,” Renly declared, quiet and cold. “A matter of grammar, as it happens. ’Tis not what we _have_ , but what we _had_. If I am to marry your sister, I intend to be both faithful and dutiful, as well as to give her the _queendom_ she desires.”

All too visibly, the soul inside Loras broke. “Yes, my lord. I was out of line. Forgive me.” He made a short bow. 

“‘Your Grace,’ soon enough. Please carry my acceptance of all terms to your lord father.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Once more, I trust you know your way out. The old gods and the new protect you on your journey.”

Renly turned, walking away from Loras as if he had not just ended the great love of both their lives. His head remained high, his back straight. 

_The posture of a king_ , Loras observed with a sharp edge of bitterness.

*****

“…further suggests delaying the wedding itself until the banners have rallied,” the knight finished as Lord—no, King Renly let the scroll spring back into its previous shape. “He guarantees them within a fortnight, as well as a septon to bless the union between Margaery and you.”

Renly tossed the scroll onto his desk. “Yes, I can read. The Roseroad is dangerous of late.”

Ser Loras’s face made no change as he replied. “My lord father will send a host behind me anon to escort you safe to Highgarden, Your Grace. Tyrell bannermen will meet you there.” 

The new-proclaimed king gave a curt nod. 

“Will that be all, my—Your Grace?” 

Behind his desk, Renly’s perfect posture collapsed and he put one elbow atop the wooden table, bracing his brow against the heel of that hand. “No, Loras. Please. Sit.”

Ser Loras made a small, stiff-backed bow. “If it please m-Your Grace, I would sooner remain standing.”

A pregnant pause stretched across the drawing room, until, at length, the king broke the weighty silence. “I don’t want to marry Margaery.”

The knight’s stoic expression twitched in some intense, unnamed emotion. “Your Grace must needs do what you think best for the realm.”

Still slumped onto his arm, King Renly nodded. “No,” he stated. “I need to marry your sister, and we _shall_ be wed. For the good of the realm.” The king cleared his throat roughly. “But I do not _want_ to marry her.”

“Your Grace?” Loras inquired, all flawless highborn manners.

Across the desk, Ser Loras noted that Renly’s shoulders had begun to shake. “Love is—a rather enduring emotion, I find,” he hedged, voice trembling just as his shoulders. The king sniffed, sitting up and letting his arm drop to his desk as he looked up with moist eyes at the knight standing on the other side of the table. “And I love you so.”

Loras’s impassive mien crumpled, his breath shuddering out of him. “ _Duty_ and _faithfulness_?” he held his ground, crossing his arms. In response, the hand Renly had rested on his desk flew over his mouth and a short, hoarse sob escaped his throat. 

“Gods help me, Loras,” the king whispered, and the knight rounded the table whilst Renly pushed back his chair; Loras fell to his knees in front of his lover and wrapped his arms around Renly’s waist as he let relieved sobbing take him as well. The king’s hands ran fitfully through Loras’s curls as he cried, only saying over and over, “I love you. Gods, but I love you so.” 

****

If a particular rumor was to be given credence, a particular son of House Lannister had once married a whore for two silvers and however much it had cost to get a septon well and truly drunk. The bride’s cloak had been a sheet of silk, the groom’s a cut burlap sack. The marriage had been a happy one, while it lasted.

Lying side by side, naked beneath the covers on Renly’s bed, this rumor came to Loras’s mind. He rolled over, half on top of the king who shared the bed. “I don’t want you to marry Margaery,” he seconded Renly’s earlier words. “You need to, and you should. But know that I like it not.” His declaration was accompanied by a sly smile down at his lover.

The king’s countenance showed slight discontent. “I don’t want you to marry…” His voice pitched up at the end, as if in consideration, but the statement never concluded.

“What, at all?” Loras giggled, stroking a hand down the side of his lover’s face. His eyes alit on the ring on his finger, a plain rose wrought in gold. He rolled off of Renly, searching for a strip of cloth—linen, brocade, anything. He found linen, meant to bandage wounds, in his own belongings, and returned to the bed with it, tugging at Renly’s hand until he sat up, back braced against the head of the bed next to Loras’s.

He laid the linen atop the covers, sliding his rose ring from his finger; Renly had a similar one, a small silver stag, less ostentatious than the typical Tyrell fare. “Take off your ring,” he requested, and it spoke to the strength of their relationship, even after the recent upset, that Renly did so without asking a reason. 

Loras picked up his own ring, taking his lover’s hand in his. “I haven’t a cloak to give you,” he explained as he slid the metal onto Renly’s fourth finger, close enough in size to Loras’s that it went over the knuckles easily. Loras put on Renly’s stag ring with something like reverence, and then took up the linen strip, laying his hand atop Renly’s in the air and winding the cloth about them lightly, joining them.

“Now,” Loras said quietly, casting a glance at his lover, who looked like he was quite affected by the little mummer’s farce of a ceremony. “I think we just say the words.” 

Their eyes met, and after a brief pause, they said together, “Father, Smith, Warrior, Mother, Maiden, Crone, Stranger. I am his, and he is mine, from this day until the end of my days.” Loras unbound their hands, leaving the rings in place, and tossed the linen to the floor, pulling his lover’s face to his for a kiss, the king looking near to tears.

“I love a good bit of sacrilege,” Renly japed, voice thick with emotion. 

“You’ll adore my sister, then,” the knight answered, a single tear finding its way down his cheek. “False piety is her specialty.” Renly dragged him in for another kiss, earnest and affectionate, and Loras moved to sit astride the king’s hips, grinding down against him as their kisses grew heated.

Renly’s hands settled on Loras’s bare backside as he pushed up against his lover. “And you?” he inquired.

The knight laughed against Renly’s caressing lips. “I’m quite traditional. I’ve pretended to wed you in the scowling eyes of the Seven, and now I mean to bed you.”

“Not pretending at that, though, I hope,” Renly teased, already tracing a finger around Loras’s rim slowly, reaching his free hand over to the edge of the bed, where, by some miracle, the phial of scented oil had not yet fallen onto the floor. 

“No- _oh_ , not in the least,” Loras moaned as the first finger slid into him. “I intend to fuck you both thoroughly and genuinely.”

****

“I think your lady of Stark is staring at us,” Margaery—now Lady Margaery of House Baratheon—murmured into her husband’s ear, leaning closer to him so as not to be overheard. The wedding festivities were as raucous as could be expected from the camp—Renly’s followers were never a specially sober lot, and Margaery would fear for life and limb when the time for bedding came. 

King Renly, as he styled himself, shot a glance down the long table. “So it would seem,” he whispered back, giving his newly-wed wife a chaste kiss on the cheek even as Margaery saw his hand tighten over her brother’s, safely out of sight under the table. “I suspect she suspects.”

“I would, were I in her place. You’re not particularly careful,” Margaery replied under her breath, all exasperation on the top of it, but a passing fondness beneath. “We’re _wed_ now.”

Renly’s free hand moved to her hair, twirling a curl around his finger. “And we’ll be bedded, and all will be done aright in the world. You shall be queen,” here he turned to Loras, “and I shall have a tragic accident that leaves you regent whilst I live out my days in the Free Cities with this one.” Renly laughed at his own wit. 

Margaery returned, with a smile of challenge, “This is, of course, assuming you’re…capable.”

Ser Loras, who had hitherto been ignoring the conversation, caught the final bit and burst into uproarious laughter as all the color drained from his lover’s face. He gave the king’s hand a squeeze, invisible to the party, stroking over it with fingers callused from swordplay. Renly’s face, schooled into the visage of the perfect lord and husband, flickered a moment into _want_ as he gazed upon his new lady’s elder brother, and she herself laughed a low-pitched, clever laugh into his ear. 

“I’m sure you’re perfectly capable, my _love_ ,” she murmured, teeth grazing his ear, “if you can only figure out where to _put_ it.”

Fortunately, or unfortunately, for Renly, one of his wedding party caught a glance of the new-made queen’s gesture, sending up the cry of, “Bed! Bed them! To bed!” to which the rest of the party quickly caught on, lifting Renly away from his love, carrying him to duty’s own chamber, stripping him along the way.

*****

Loras laughed. “You’re naked,” he observed.

Renly returned his own easy laugh. “That I am. Come here.”

Trepidation entered Loras’s eyes, unaccustomed and unfamiliar. Renly had, suspiciously, not assigned Ser Loras—Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Rainbow Guard, whatever ridiculous name he was calling it—to stand sentry outside the bridal chamber, a slightly-larger tent than that of either of its single occupants. At an impatient gesture from the king, however, Loras approached, shedding his tunic as he went, fitting himself against his lover with all the familiarity of years past.

The king’s arm tightened around Loras, who pressed his face into Renly’s bare chest as if to erase the suspicion creeping through his mind. Surely, though, surely, if they’d actually consummated the marriage, Loras would have smelled it. He lifted his head a bit, asking with an air that tried for casual, “Did you fuck her?”

The damning question went unanswered except for the stroking of Renly’s hand through his lover’s hair, Loras’s short nails tracing patterns on the king’s bare chest. “Renly,” he pressed quietly, turning his face away from the kiss Renly attempted to press to his brow, “did you—“

“No,” came his sister’s voice from the entrance of the tent, where she was letting the flap that served as a door fall closed behind her. “Plenty of time for that later,” she continued, and then, “It’s bad luck for the lord and lady to sleep apart on their wedding night.”

As Loras made to disentangle himself from the embrace of his lover, Margaery climbed into bed on the other side of Renly, having stripped down to her smallclothes. The knight of the kingsguard watched his sister trade whispered conversation with her lord, picking up his tunic and slipping it back on as the hushed discourse seemed to come to a halt.

“Your Grace,” he said with a courteous bow, by way of exiting, “my lady.”

The Knight of Flowers had not been in his own tent an hour when the king half-stumbled in, still a bit tipsy from the feast, more half-asleep than anything. “Your Grace,” he whispered urgently, sitting up in bed. “Should you not be—?”

Renly showed none of the reluctance Loras had earlier, divesting himself of his clothing and sliding into Loras’s sheets like no time had passed, and certainly no marriage. “Had you paid attention, sweet Loras,” he muttered, pressing a kiss to the knight’s lips, “my lady fair did say that we had only to sleep together. Which we did. Your sister kindly woke me and sent me to you—some fable about _snoring_.”

This time, Loras willingly accepted the arms that curled tight around his chest. Eventually, he knew, this—the midnight trysts, the skulking about—would have to cease; the king and queen must needs produce heirs. He said as much to his king, who began to protest, as he did every time the subject was mentioned. “In Dorne—“

“My love, I know what they do in Dorne,” Loras whispered against Renly’s lips, even as he rolled his lord over, mounting his hips with the deftness of moves well-practiced. “We are not in Dorne.”

“More’s the pity,” Renly breathed, pushing urgently at Loras’s smallclothes. “When I am king over Westeros, I shall have a consort.”

Loras caught the king’s hands, stilling them. “I thought you were going to have a tragic accident,” he answered with a warm, wry smile. Renly tugged his hands free of their confines, using them to pull Loras chest-to-chest with him, kissing him with a fire he wished he could rouse for his queen. 

“But first, I shall have my wedding night,” the king murmured against Loras’s lips, and then, as they resumed their previous activities, “Loras, my Loras.”

*****

“This was not the battle I had in mind—“ Loras arched his back, hips lifting from the table as Renly tightened around him. “Doing that—on purpose,” he ground out, reaching out to still the king’s movements. “Cunt,” he added for good measure, and Renly laughed.

That did something interesting to the way their bodies intertwined, and while Loras gasped heavily, his lover took in a shuddering breath and loosed it on a soft moan. “ _Move,_ ” he demanded, hand braced against Loras’s chest.

Loras was the one to laugh this time, prompting a sharp inhale from Renly. “You abduct me from my own tent under guise of _strategizing_ for _battle_ , climb atop me, and then venture to give me _orders_.” 

The king shifted, Loras’s cock brushing the spot deep inside him that made his limbs melt and his heart jump in his chest. “You are— _mm—_ a member of my Guard, are you not? _Yes—_ “ he hissed out as Loras arched again, the sturdy desk beneath them making a slight creak of protest. The battlefield maps lay forgotten on the ground.

“I am,” Loras breathed as Renly finally began moving, holding Loras down on the desktop as he fucked himself hard and fast, the crown he’d placed on the edge of the desk coming perilously close to joining the maps.

“L-Lord Commander, if I recall,” the king forced out, his free hand moving to take his own cock in hand, flushed and beginning to leak onto his belly. “You have a duty to h-help me, ah, plan our next move— _Loras_!” he cried out in surprised indignation as Loras grabbed him, reversing their positions quickly, the king exhaling sharply as his back hit the wood.

Loras leaned down to drop a kiss to Renly’s open lips as he pressed deeper into that heat, any further utterance from the king becoming incoherent as Loras commenced fucking him in earnest, Renly’s thighs falling open as the Lord Commander of the Rainbow Guard lifted his king’s lower half, pulling him onto his cock even as he thrust in.

Renly’s hand sped over his own member and then lost its coordination completely as the king spilled his seed onto his own stomach with a soft cry, Loras finding his own release in the repeated spasm of Renly’s muscles around him.

Of necessity, it was only a short time after that the knight pulled out of his lover, wiping away the better part of the mess of seed on himself and on Renly with a kerchief, pulling his smallclothes and breeches back up as the king set out in search of his own clothing. 

The crown finally had enough, pitching itself off of the desk and hitting the ground with a clunking noise as Renly stood, shirt in one hand and smallclothes in the other. 

*******

For all but Brienne of Tarth, being on Renly’s kingsguard had taught them the skills of being selectively blind and deaf. There had never been any solid evidence produced, mind you; if there had, no amount of stubborn denial would have helped the knights selected by Renly to surround him at all times. 

If Renly looked sometimes more fond of his Lord Commander than of his lady wife, well, that was the bond of brothers-in-arms. Nothing else to say, really, as the king’s eyes lingered overlong on Ser Loras’s lips, quirked up in a tiny smile at some jape he’d made—especially good friends, then, or the tie between a squire and his lord, everyone knew that was a close one.

The knights of the Rainbow Guard felt a nameless pity for Brienne the Blue; what brought it on, none would ever be able to say with certainty, but it cast a silent pall over all their dealings with her. Most of the Guard simply named it disdain for a woman who fancied herself a knight.

_Only that, and nothing more_ , Brienne assured herself as she broke bread for the first time with the other knights of the Guard and their Lord Commander, who, truth be told, was quite fetching. She had only ever had eyes for Renly Baratheon, though, and as he requested entry to the guards’ tent, Ser Loras springing up to welcome him, she thought him ten times as regal as he had been when she first danced with him on the Sapphire Isles.

“Brienne!” King Renly exclaimed as he sank down to the left of his Lord Commander, paying her a bright smile. “Excellently done, putting Loras in his place like that!” 

The blue knight attempted to ignore the omission of Ser Loras’s title, instead choosing to blush and mumble a response. “Don’t be so modest,” the king insisted. “It was about time someone beat our fair Ser Loras at his own game. I’d grown tired of winning bets.” His smile turned into a laugh at his own wit, which prompted a narrow-eyed look from Ser Loras. Her own heart seemed to stop for an instant, and then restart in full force. _Married, he is wed_ , she chastened herself, and then Ser Loras was saying something disrespectful about King Renly’s heritage, and Brienne the Blue saw red—

“You had ought to pay the proper respect to your king!” she yelled at her Lord Commander as her fist came down on the table, and immediately regretted doing so, bowing her head as the tent fell silent as a crypt. For a beat, all was quiet, until the king’s roaring laughter shattered the stillness. 

Ser Loras, at least, had the decency to look contrite as the rest of the Guard resumed their meal. King Renly’s laughter died down enough to allow him to speak. “While I appreciate the sentiment,” he said warmly, “I know not what I would do if Loras suddenly began _respecting_ me.” 

If Brienne looked only at the table, she could imagine that warmth was directed at her, and King Renly was not looking to his right at his Lord Commander, seated in a place of honor which he had won but did not _deserve_. She did not have to see, at the end of the meal, King Renly getting to his feet, dismissing himself and Ser Loras with talk of strategy and logistics which needed plotting and planning, bidding them good evening, assigning watch posts to several members of the Rainbow Guard.

_I am a newcomer here_ , she promised herself, _and that is all_. There could be no other reason for her omission from duty tonight.

******

“Do you think Stannis will be very angry if I treat with him wearing this?” Renly held up the forest-green doublet, pressing it to his front. 

“I think _Stannis_ ,” Loras replied carefully, shifting his weight to one side, “shall be very angry no matter what you wear, Your Grace.” From across the king’s tent, Brienne of Tarth looked an amalgam of uncomfortable and cross. Doubtless, her Lord Commander’s affixation of King Renly’s proper address did not satisfy her sense of—Loras knew not what. 

Propriety, mayhap. Decorum. Ser Loras was snapped out of his considerations by the king’s declaration that his wardrobe was worthless, but, “Of course, you, Loras, look resplendent in your armor. Does he not, Brienne?”

Brienne’s stoic expression betrayed itself only by a twitch of a brow as she responded. “Yes, Your Grace.”

Renly’s eyes fell hot on him as Loras said flippantly, “I look resplendent, and Your Grace looks half-clothed.” The blue knight of the Rainbow Guard gave what seemed a full-body spasm of irritation, which Loras studiously ignored. 

Even so, the king noticed. “Brienne, is aught the matter?”

“No,” she gritted between her teeth, “Your Grace.” Brienne stepped forward to help her liege with his chosen raiment, not altogether different from the attire he had presented to begin with. For all his fuss at choosing his habit, it took mere minutes for the blue knight to get him into it. 

When he judged himself ready, Renly’s eye turned on Loras once more, his stare still heavy. “Not the armor, I think.”

Ser Loras liked to think he had refined the art of the insolent blink especially for Renly. “Your Grace requested I wear this set only yesterday.” The king said nothing, only raked his gaze slowly up Loras’s armor-clad form. Back down. And up again. Loras quashed the urge to laugh or to do some other wildly-inappropriate thing, instead calling up a mummer’s courtesy. “Of course. I would not want Your Grace—“ Oh, but he _would_. “—distracted at your meeting. I shall change forthwith.”

The king cleared his throat before he spoke again. “Yes, see that you do. Brienne, with me. Ser Loras,” he dismissed himself far too curtly, bowing out of his tent with all haste, leaving Loras to chuckle fondly before heading back to his own tent to reconsider his choice of vestment.

*****

When King Renly heard Ser Loras’s voice singing softly to the Mother, the Father, and the Warrior, he walked quietly into the small makeshift sept, where the Lord Commander of the Rainbow Guard was kneeling, head bowed, hands clasped. When Renly knelt next to him, Loras looked up, his eyes red-rimmed. 

“I’ve never known you to pray,” Renly whispered, running one thumb over Loras’s sharp cheekbone.

“Nor I, you,” Loras hissed back defiantly, “yet here we are.” 

When Renly had requested Ser Loras’s company in prayer, he had not looked for Loras in the sept, but in his own tent—woefully empty, it turned out, of naked, willing knights. Wives as well, but he suspected Margaery had gone to Lady Stark for one reason or another. 

Loras bowed his head again. It seemed that Lady Catelyn’s words had resonated much more deeply with the knight than they had with his king. Renly had never prayed, not properly, and he did not intend to start tonight, on the eve of his battle with Stannis. He was like Robert in that much, at least; Stannis, of the three of them, had always been the most pious. If Renly was to start a war on the morrow, he wanted his last night to be wine, women, and song—only, less wine, and much fewer women. 

When his lover’s shoulders began to shake, though, Renly’s thoughts of Robert fled, and he pressed one hand to Loras’s back, quickly shrugged off as Loras dismissed him in a voice thick with emotion. Renly pulled his hand back to himself, kneeling in silence, head bowed, listening to the knight’s voice rising and falling with the traditional pleas to the gods. 

Neither of them had ever seen war. Renly feared for the realm, and Loras feared for Renly; this was the main difference between them. The king would not cry for the realm; he held out his hope that he could come to some agreement with Stannis, that it would not need to come to all-out war between brothers. He wanted absolutely not at all to contemplate the possibility of failure, and all it entailed.

After a time, Loras was silent, his hitching breaths the only sound in the silence of the little sept. Never lifting his head, he whimpered, “I love you, you know.”

What little resolve Renly possessed, holding him in his position of mock-prayer, deserted him, and he pulled Loras to him abruptly, the knight turning his body so that he might put his arms around his king, much more chaste in the sight of the faces of God than their usual embraces. “I know,” Renly answered gruffly into Loras’s fine curls, holding his lover and Lord Commander until he composed himself. “I am sure your gods heard you.” 

Loras’s skeptical smile was the same, if his eyes were not; as he disentangled himself from his king, he shook his head, “No, you are not.” He stood, brushing off his knees, and Renly did the same. 

_Who could refuse such an earnest plea?_ Renly thought, but said nothing as Loras looked up at him, brushing his face lightly with one hand and turning, heading out of the sept. The king followed, and, to his relief, Ser Loras led the way to Renly’s own tent, ducking past the entryway and pulling Renly in after him. The flap had scarce dropped closed behind them when Loras reeled him in for a deep kiss, whispering Renly’s name in the same tone he had taken with the gods.

Renly pressed closer, allowing his lover to take the lead for tonight, tilting his head back as Loras’s lips moved to his jaw and pressed kisses there, down to his neck, where his teeth left little stinging marks and his tongue lapped over them delicately to soothe them. Loras could no more stop teasing his king than he could cease breathing, and the chance of losing this, the one thing he had valued longer than any other, came upon him like a wave.

As much as he wanted to turn a blind eye to the possibility of failure, Renly set out to commit every inch of his lover to memory, every sound and sigh and plea. Loras’s hands, strong and callused, ran over Renly, first above his clothes, then under them, until he finally had enough and removed their clothes entirely, following everywhere his hands roamed with his lips, warm and chapped and as close to perfect as Renly had ever known or cared to.

“In love with you,” Renly gasped as Loras’s tongue mapped out his hipbones, his cock, his inner thighs. “I am, I mean,” he murmured when the knight returned to his level, pressing a kiss to his lips before spreading Renly’s thighs and setting to work making Renly a religious man using only his tongue.

*****

“It’s not for you to wear,” Margaery pleaded with him. “Garlan—“

“Garlan didn’t—not like—not like I did,” her elder brother declared in the voice of a broken man. “If not me, then no one.”

The squire, some faceless Fossoway boy, entreated him again. “Milord, it’s too large. The armor, it’s—“

“Make it fit,” Loras gritted out between his teeth.

Margaery took her brother’s hand. “Let Garlan bear the weight of his ghost, brother, _please_.”

Her brother’s eyes closed, his brow knitting as he breathed a command to the squire. “Take it off.” The young Fossoway did as he was commanded, swiftly if a bit clumsily, and set aside the deep-green plate, excusing himself from the tent and the presence of the two Tyrell siblings. Margaery did not for a second think she had won; she had seen widows and widowers before, but never so fresh-made. She grieved her husband not for herself, but for her brother, who now crumpled to his knees next to the bier where Renly lay, much more solemn in death than he’d ever been in life. 

Loras did not speak; the words he would have said to Renly were meant to stay unsaid. It was not the way of Westeros to act as he and Renly had for years, ever since Loras’s first tourney. It was not Loras’s place to grieve openly for his lover as a wife would her husband. 

Margaery’s voice seemed distant as she spoke to him. “…me help you, brother, I _want_ to help…” 

He unfastened the chain of a pendant he wore around his neck, a golden rose set with emerald leaves and stem, and saw that his hands shook as he re-fastened it about Renly’s cold neck, hiding the flower beneath Renly’s tunic. There was some symbolism to be had there, he thought dismally, and then stood, pressing a fond hand to the side of his former lover’s face before turning to acknowledge his sister. 

“Tell Garlan we ride in three days,” he ordered quietly. Outwardly, he slipped back into the guise of the living, breathing Ser Loras, Knight of Flowers, Lord Commander of the Rainbow Guard. 

In Loras’s heart of hearts, he knew something had died alongside Lord—no, King Renly Baratheon. He was entering into the long, dark night of the soul, where he would never love again, not truly and madly and _inconveniently_ , so inconveniently. He would have followed Renly to the ends of the earth and back, into King’s Landing and right up to the damned Iron Throne.

“When the sun has set, no candle can replace it.”

“What?” his sister replied, unhearing or uncomprehending.

Loras shook his head and exited the tent, repeating his order to tell Garlan that they rode to battle in three days, their army headed by the ghost of Renly Baratheon.

*****

Ser Loras Tyrell knew, beyond any doubt, that the Stranger would come for him. He wished it sooner rather than later, because in life, he was on fire.

He would have cursed his foolishness and his boldness, had he the focus to feel anything but the flames where his flesh had been. Sleep became his comrade-in-arms, whether he buckled beneath the pain and fainted or drank the concoctions tipped down his burned throat by the maesters.In sleep, he still burned, but less fiercely.

The knight lay abed, unable to move, unable to open his eyes more than a slit, unable to speak. The oil had taken his face, the beauty once coveted by nine out of ten women of the realms (“And the tenth has a preference for women!” Renly laughed), and melted it into a grotesque mask, like wax that had dripped from a candle and frozen in its descent, leaving red trails of bare flesh behind.

Margaery had sent a raven, telling him that women in the streets had cried and mourned and rent their garments in sadness at his injury. A maester had read it to him before dosing him with some potion for sleep. There would probably be songs, Loras thought. The Knight of Flowers and his legendary beauty.

_He would have laughed. He would have laughed and looked at my face and said, “Loras, there’s been a marked improvement!” He would not have mourned anywhere I could hear him…else he would have just swooned._

Dreams of the dead were said to herald the arrival of the Stranger, and Loras gave himself up to them. 

He dreamed he felt his lover behind him, pressed against him from top to toe. Renly had always run hot in life. Loras broke into a sweat. _My love,_ he mused, _I fear I’ve done something stupid_.

A curl of fire licking up his back became Renly’s tongue, sliding up his spine, before his lover settled in behind him again, tossing a solid arm over his chest, so tightly that the knight could hardly breathe. 

Renly’s breath was a flame breaking over his ear. _You take_ so _much looking after,_ his dream-lover sighed, the tone of voice, affectionate and exasperated, exactly as it had been in life. Loras began to shiver, shoulders shaking uncontrollably as Renly’s hands of fire stroked over him gently. 

_Will you look after me?_ His thoughts were a slow murmur, dulled by pain and potion. Renly’s arms tightened around him, fiery-hot and crushing. Loras sighed out a breath.

_I will always look after you_. Renly’s blazing kiss sucked the last of Loras’s air from him, his shivering becoming more violent, then ceasing altogether.

When the maesters entered the sick chamber at Dragonstone, they found the Knight of Flowers, perfectly still in death, a smile on his melted face. 


End file.
